The Blaze of Noon

This is a story told in the first person by a blind man. His name is Louis Dunkel, and he is a masseur. The scene is Cornwall, where he is staying at the house of a patient, Mrs. Nance, whose niece, Sophie, falls in love with him. Their affair, momentarily broken by the strange intrusion of the far more seriously afflicted Amity Nance, is recounted in a prose of great delicacy and precision. `The Blaze of Noon' was written in 1938 and first published the following year in circumstances which Mr. Heppenstall amusingly describes in a prefatory note to the present edition. The book carried a warmly commendatory foreword by Elizabeth Bowen.