Grim yet wonderfully written, and hard to put down. ( )

Bleakly humorous, piercingly sad, and altogether brilliant. I struggled a bit to get into the story, put it down when I thought it would make me too sad (or strike too close to home), and finally was wowed. This is the story of a woman, Claire Temple, nearing the end of her life whose short term memory is forsaking her. She was once a minor literary and society figure who was attractive to men, even if she never achieved the status, artistic or marital, she aspired to. Now she has become impoverished, incapable of taking care of herself, but also annoying, needy, snobbish. She is tended to by her Irish cook and a companion who provides nothing of the kind of companionship Claire desires. Both are, as she never forgets, her social inferiors.

The novel proceeds in a kind of slow burn. Claire is as annoying to the reader as she is to her minders. She reminded me very much of my mother in her last forgetful, disoriented years. And I was not always much better than Claire Temple’s helpers in terms of patience and understanding — it was hard!

Hoult is unrelenting in her ability to keep the reader face-to-face with Claire’s tedious behavior. The cook Kathleen is indeed unkind and the companion Miss Jones a bore, but you can’t help but sympathize and feel grateful not to be in their shoes. But still, gradually, you are pulled toward some greater understanding, some more imaginative response to the old lady’s affliction. This movement is consolidated, made explicit, grounded philosophically in the completely bang-up ending of the book. I’ll say nothing further.

Some of the prose is exceedingly beautiful. ( )

This tour de force novel, written by Norah Hoult during WWll, is a wrenching study of a woman with memory loss. Clair Temple is 80 years old and is living in Kensington during the Blitz with only a servant and a companion for company. Her short term memory is almost nonexistent and so she is constantly repeating herself, asking the same questions, forgetting that there is a war on just outside her windows. Her servant who is also the cook, the housekeeper, her personal maid, is an unsympathethic, rude Irish girl who just considers the old lady nasty and mad. They have loud shouting matches which reduce Clair to tears of fury and frustration. When Clair gets a companion, she is dull and so passive that Clair again becomes frustrated at having to interact with a lump of a woman. The three are caught in the web of the war. Kathleen, although she really dislikes her employer, stays because she is paid decent wages, can entertain her soldier boyfriend without interference, and possibly feather her nest by pilfering and selling the odd trinkets scattered around the house. Miss Jones has drifted through life being a companion to more fortunate women. She is too old to get a defense job, has few marketable skills, and is hanging on just have a roof over her head. Clair knows she is "losing her mind" and is frightened of being locked up in an asylum. They dislike each other and need each other.

The genius of the book is the way that Hoult shows Clair trying to cope with her disappearing existence. Clair likes the woman who comes once a week to do the laundry and has pleasant conversations with her. The problem is that she keeps asking after the woman's husband who is dead and causing the woman constantly to relive her grief. The few friends Clair has left eventually stop visiting because it is just too hard to keep reexplaining what has happened in their lives. They weary of Clair's accusations that Kathleen is trying to poison her by serving bad meat and no matter how they explain the rationing rules Clair cannot grasp them.

Clair's tragedy is that she has a brilliant mind that is shutting down. She wrote novels and still can tell wonderful stories from her past when she was friends with Henry James, was proposed to by Oscar Wilde, and introduced Mrs Humphrey Ward to Christobel Pankhurst. She peppers her speech with quotes from Shakespeare to illustrate her points. She has a physical energy and no outlet to release it. She is terrified because she knows that her memory is failing her and fears that soon she will cease to exist as Clair and become nothing. She tries to work her mind, with no success.

Clair is not likeable. Her attitudes toward her hired help are Victorian when servants were a necessity and not to be treated as equals. She cannot comprehend why "cook" is so disrespectful and why Miss Jones is even in her house. Kathleen and Miss Jones have to put up with tantrums, ducking teapots, accusations to the police, and the daily grind of explaining again and again why food is rationed and and drapes must be shut tight because of the blackout. In the house, everyone is to be pitied. Today, Clair's Altzeimers or senile dementia would be more understood. Caregivers would be informed on how to manage her fears and how to stimulate what remains of her mind. They wouldn't just classify her as "mad" and to be tolerated. In 1944, during a war, there was neither the knowledge or the tolerance for Clair's condition.

At the end of the novel, I felt like I had been inside Clair's head, but also inside the heads of everyone who had to deal with her. It is a reading experience I will never forget. However, I have to add a warning. This may not be the novel for you if you are living with a person with memory loss or have done so. At least not now. In the future, if the pain ever lessens, you may want to read about Clair and see the world through her eyes. It could help you understand how the person you cared for had to cope with life. ( )

“She was all alone now in the darkness, now that to please Mr Mills she had left her torch turned off. There were no windows. Everyone was shut in upon themselves.” (p. 245).

There Were No Windows is the story of Claire Temple, an eighty-plus woman who has lost her memory. At one point in her life she was a well-known author with numerous love affairs; but now she lives alone, with only her servants to care for her. Set in London at the height of WWII, this novel chronicles the downfall of a woman who attempted, in her life, to be an individual, when the reader discovers that in the end, all of that doesn’t matter—because we all end up in some form or another like Claire (scary thought).

It’s a brilliant book, albeit with a difficult subject. How does an author get into the mindset of an elderly woman who is losing her memory? Norah Hoult does it in a real, believable way. There’s a certain irony to Claire’s story, how at one time she was a celebrated author in her own right, making her own decisions about her life and living more freely than her Victorian contemporaries; but that in the end, shocked by her behavior, her family have given up on her and all she has left are a couple of servants who don’t care for her and talk about her nastily behind her back.

Watching Claire Temple’s descent is fascinating: she’s frustrating because she constantly repeats herself and makes up stories (probably because she doesn’t remember what really happened, so her mind fills in the gaps), and says mean things without thinking; but you really feel sorry for her—she even forgets that there’s a major war going on, literally right outside her windows. Her recollections of the past are therefore unreliable; is she lying about whether she was really married to Wallace Temple? (is Claire’s last name therefore really Temple?)

Norah Hoult based this novel closely on the life of Violet Hunt, who at the height of her career had salons at her home, which were attended by everyone from Rebecca West to DH Lawrence; it was rumored that as a young woman she was even proposed to by Oscar Wilde. It’s interesting to see the parallels between fact and fiction. ( )

First published in 1944 this is the poignant story of Claire Temple former novelist nearing 80 years old, who is rapidly losing her memory, a character based on the writer Violet Hunt. In this novel Claire is often confused, distressed and accusing as she struggles to understand the world around her. We see the situation both through the eyes of Claire herself and of those who are a part of her world, the cook, the companion, some old friends and the doctor. The London blitz forms a backdrop to the novel, and Claire is constantly reminded that there is a war on, that cream is unobtainable, that shops close at 4 O’clock in the winter due to the blackout. In this beautifully written novel, Norah Hoult has succeeded in portraying memory loss in such a way, that the reader can feel the very frustrations experienced by the various characters, can completely sympathise with her confusions. While portraying Claire Temple as difficult and frustrating, Hoult managed to make her vulnerable too, she’s a small elderly woman, dependent upon others and deeply distressed by her situation. She is also a terrible snob, which makes for a few lighter humorous moments in what is after all a rather sobering story. ( )