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Long Distance

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"Well, there's this place. I haven't started to explore it properly. Once I tried to make a map, but it was useless. . . ."

Uncharted then, at a long distance from the past or from the world once known (it is all a question of beginning again) Penelope Mortimer's novel, insidious at the outset, is increasingly baffling-- taking place under a cloud cover of dislocation. Where is she then--this anonymous woman (but a woman first which of course means last--many feminist themes are stated), who is "a blank slate, an empty glass,"--who is doomed to repeat experience until it is remembered--who will be doomed to delete experience which might betray any independence of spirit or show of feeling.

At first in a world where time has been obliterated (there are no clocks) and where personal memories are vaguer than collective ones. To be sure other people come and go--the energetic, confident, masculine Gauleiter Gondzik (Gotzink, Gizdonk, Godzonk) or the housekeeper-jailer Mrs. April or a few for whom she cares--a dog, a crying baby, and the gentle Simon who spends time with her after she is demoted to the institutionalized West Wing where eventually there will be shock and drugs to teach her to conform.

For a while this one world/no world seems to be a form of the collective unconscious; in time it ramifies to represent the automated, authoritarian sick society (intimations of Laing abound). "I don't understand." "No. That's the trouble." "You will. In the end." Perhaps. But even if you don't, Mrs. Mortimer's novel is extremely inductive and it contains some of the best writing she has ever committed to the page. To paraphrase Auden, it becomes real insofar as it reads us.

- Kirkus, 1974

204 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

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About the author

Penelope Mortimer

34 books72 followers
Early life

She was born in Rhyl, Flintshire, Wales, the younger child of an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also sexually abused her. Her father frequently changed his parish, so, consequently, she attended numerous schools. She left University College, London, after only one year.

Adulthood

She married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937, and they had two daughters, including the actress Caroline Mortimer, and two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler.
She met barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him in 1949. Together they had a daughter and a son.

She had one novel, Johanna, published under her name, Penelope Dimont, then as Penelope Mortimer, she authored A Villa in Summer (1954; Michael Joseph). It received critical acclaim. More novels followed.

She was also a freelance journalist, whose work appeared regularly in The New Yorker. As an agony aunt for the Daily Mail, she wrote under the nom de plume Ann Temple. In the late 1960s, she replaced Penelope Gilliatt as film critic for The Observer.

Her marriage to John Mortimer was difficult. They both had frequent extramarital affairs. Penelope had six children by four different men. They divorced in 1971. Her relationships with men were the inspiration for the novels, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958; republished in 2008 by Persephone Books) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962; reissued in 2011 by New York Review Books), which was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. It starred Peter Finch, James Mason and Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar nomination for her role.

Mortimer continued in journalism, mainly for The Sunday Times, and also wrote screenplays. Her biography of the Queen Mother was commissioned by Macmillan, but when completed, it was rejected so instead Viking published it in 1986. Her former agent Giles Gordon in his Guardian obituary called it "the most astute biography of a royal since Lytton Strachey was at work. Penelope had approached her subject as somebody in the public eye, whose career might as well be recorded as if she were a normal human being."

She wrote two volumes of autobiography, About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize, and About Time Too: 1940–78 in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, is unpublished.

She died from cancer, aged 81, in Kensington, London, England.


Novels
Johanna (1947) (as Penelope Dimont)
A Villa in Summer (1954)
The Bright Prison (1956)
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958)
The Pumpkin Eater (1962)
My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968)
The Home (1971)
Long Distance (1974)
The Handyman (1983)

Short story collections
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (1977)
Humphrey's Mother

Autobiographies
About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979)
About Time Too: 1940–78 (1993)

Biography
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1986), revised edition published in 1995, subtitled An Alternative Portrait Of Her Life And Times

Travel writing
With Love and Lizards (co-authored with John Mortimer, 1957)

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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Profile Image for Dave Morris.
Author 204 books156 followers
December 29, 2021
Some reviews dismiss the book as sub-Kafka, but in fact as a stream of disturbed consciousness I think it works pretty well. I don't know if this is what madness actually feels like (it could very well be; Mortimer apparently knew whereof she wrote) but it's convincing and unsettling, sometimes nasty, sometimes scary, occasionally wonderful.
Profile Image for Jenny Lee.
39 reviews
April 25, 2023
Pretty torn on this. This book has some phenomenal feminist prose that discuss the contradictions in femininity and intimate experiences of womanhood and I did think it was fantastic in places. However, it also very heavily dips itself into surrealism and in places is incredibly difficult to follow. If you dig beautiful prose and don't mind difficult to grasp, contradicting allegory then absolutely give it a read. It has some very relatable and intimate exposition that make you strongly empathise with the pain Penelope Mortimer was going through at the time of writing. But if you're looking for a more structured and easier read, one of her other books may be more appropriate.
16 reviews1 follower
March 25, 2017
I read this about 25 years ago from a library in a different town. Parts of it stayed with me; I found a copy last month and read it again. The inner and outer self: such a disconnect, amazing, frightening. I think I'll put it on the shelf and take it down again after a while.
874 reviews14 followers
January 9, 2026
I really like the short stories I have read of hers. This novella was a bridge too far. A woman in some sort of institution but I could not follow as well as one would like
Profile Image for Peter.
8 reviews
March 5, 2013
I'm a big fan of the books of Penelope Mortimer. I love the way she writes. One of the things I especially like is the way her books have a beautiful sort of rhythm. She was a melodious writer. But, not the case here. It's written in a sort of past present tense. A tense I hate.

She opens the door. The cold air affronts her. She returns to her room.

I think I've made my point.

The book was extremely well received when it was published and was, I believe, one of the first novels to be published whole in The New Yorker.
(I'll check on that fun fact and return here to confirm).

The point I'm making is maybe missing something and this is indeed the masterpiece it was heralded as, back in 1974.

I remember seeing it, in very good company, on a lot of interesting, contemporary book shelves.
76 reviews
April 8, 2021
I have a distinct sense the story is supposed to be a metaphor, but bite me, what exactly it's a metaphor for, I have no idea.
It does have mentions of the repetition of mistakes as a consequence to forgetting experiences, so perhaps it's about cycles in woman's life journey. the split that occurs at the end, then, would be a beginning of a new cycle. That's my best guess, but it's still a conclusion I'm less than confident in - there's as much evidence in there supporting it as contradicting it. Main character is not a reliable narrator, so it's hard to tell with her. The conclusion at the end sends rather mixed messages and so doesn't help either.
I have to note I admire the way it's written, though - our heroine inarguably is mentally unstable, and her narration is about what I would expect from someone in that state.
Profile Image for Andrew.
57 reviews31 followers
April 16, 2017
Mortimer is a very good writer. I couldn't stop reading this strange novel. An unnamed woman, in the first person, describes her ordeal at an institute in the British countryside, presumably a mental institute. While there she meets fellow occupants, plans an escape, gets sent to solitary confinement and the rest cannot be spoiled. Ambiguous at times, heart breaking and tender, it's a shame Mortimer isn't more talked about and shared.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews

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