With No Crying

by Celia Fremlin

With No Crying (1980), Celia Fremlin's eleventh novel, tells of Miranda, a daydreaming fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who has encouraged a boy to seduce her and is glad to find herself pregnant, but then bitterly resentful when her parents talk her into an abortion. She pads up her stomach, runs away from home, and finds refuge in a squat where her new housemates await the newborn keenly. How, though, can Miranda save face?

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Celia was born in Kingsbury, now part of London, England. She was the daughter of Heaver Fremlin and Margaret Addiscott. Her older brother, John H. Fremlin, later became a nuclear physicist. Celia studied at Somerville College, Oxford University. From 1942 to 2000 she lived in Hampstead, London. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, with whom she had three children; he died in 1968. In 1985, Celia married Leslie Minchin, who died in 1999. Her many crime novels and stories helped modernize the sensation novel tradition by introducing criminal and (rarely) supernatural elements into domestic settings. Her 1958 novel The Hours Before Dawn won the Edgar Award in 1960.

With Jeffrey Barnard, she was co-presenter of a BBC2 documentary “Night and Day” describing diurnal and nocturnal London, broadcast 23 January 1987.

Fremlin was an advocate of assisted suicide and euthanasia. In a newspaper interview she admitted to assisting four people to die.[1] In 1983 civil proceedings were brought against her as one of the five members of the EXIT Executive committee which had published “A Guide to Self Deliverance” , but the court refused to declare the booklet unlawful.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia...]

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

She looked terribly young to be pregnant, but all the same she made a charming picture in her bright, flowered maternity smock

Hmm, not my favourite from Fremlin as the 'psychological thriller' elements feel overly contrived and added on artificially to the plot. That's not to say this doesn't have its high points: Fremlin's evocation of a 14/15 year old school girl and the school disco sent me spinning back decades and I wish more had been made of Miranda's fraught relationship to her liberal parents, her fantasies of motherhood and negotiation of adolescence. But after an interesting interlude where her mother arranges and sees Miranda through a reluctant abortion a rather unconvincing plot unrolls. We have to believe an advanced trainee doctor can't spot the difference between a nine-month pregnancy... and a cushion! while a woman with no medical knowledge but personal experience spots the play acting immediately.

We can see Fremlin's constant interests here in the lives of women, constructions of femininity, and attitudes towards motherhood. She's particularly attentive to the aftermath of the loss of a baby, even when consensual, and how that might play out in a woman who thinks she's lost her teenage daughter.. We even get a glimpse at a man's tentative attempts to act like a loving father as a result of a crisis though Mr Field's rather lukewarm embrace has been more productively explored in the earlier books.

All the same, the add-on of a required 'mad woman' and a rather clumsy sleight of hand fell rather flat for me. Fremlin can do better than this and it feels like the parts are greater than the whole.

[Brian E Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this her 11th novel, Fremlin once again strays from her typical housewife protagonist. She still presents a suburban family, the Fields, and a story within the domestic suspense genre Fremlin specializes in. However, her protagonist is the 15-year-old daughter Miranda rather than the mother Norah. And, once again, the male husband/father is a feckless figure in this fairly liberal family unit.

The story itself is an atypical and interesting one. It involves Miranda’s pregnancy, Miranda’s response to her parents’ insistence on an abortion, Miranda running away and living in a local commune-house and the existence of a stolen baby.

The book started slowly, but gradually grew on me until the twists and wrong inferences of the mysteries of who stole the baby and what Miranda was really up to really engaged me. I thought this one might turn out great. Unfortunately, the denouement of the mystery, while creative, did not come off as true or even completely executed. Unusual with Fremlin, I had questions left and some skepticism about the ending.

I admire Fremlin for her creativity here even though it wasn’t executed that well. At the end I thought of a gymnast vaulter or a diver trying a difficult vault or dive but just not sticking the landing or entry because of the difficulty. While it may not have been executed well, you appreciate watching the interesting and complex lead up. I will still rate this as 4 rather than 3 stars, though, due to the extremely enjoyable suspense during the ending lead up and Fremlin’s razor sharp human insight. I really enjoyed her depiction of the Field’s neighbor’s rationalizations of her behavior.

MY RATINGS FOR FREMLINS
(Instead of rating 3.5 stars I rate at 4.3, 3.7 and 3.3 stars for better rounding).

4.3 - The Long Shadow
4.3 – The Spider Orchid
4.3 – The Jealous One
4.3 – The Hours Before Dawn
4.0 - Prisoner’s Base
4.0 – The Trouble Makers
3.7 - Uncle Paul
3.7 – With No Crying
3.7 – Ghostly Stories
3.3 – Seven Lean Years
3.3 – Appointment With Yesterday

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read a few of Celia Fremlin's books to date, and ended up purchasing a few more on the Kindle store recently. She is an undeservedly neglected writer; barely anyone seems to have read the majority of her novels on Goodreads, which is a real shame. Fremlin is a master, both in terms of atmosphere and suspense, and her characterisation is always both strong and shrewd. She is incredibly perceptive, and that is no different within With No Crying. So well plotted, I very much enjoyed this novel, which was tense in all the right places, and raises a myriad of questions and small mysteries as it goes on.

[G L · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was mean of Norah, now, to be so secretive over this Miranda business. More than mean, indeed: it was downright anti-social. For is it not very nearly a duty, if something bad happens to you, to feed it into the neighbourhood pool of gossip? To donate it, as it were, to those with less eventful lives than your own? Some people are stingy with their misfortunes as others are stingy over money.

This is my first Celia Fremlin. I learned of her through a GR group that I recently joined. I enjoyed the first 50 or so pages very much, partly because of zingers like the one that I quoted at the beginning, and partly because I enjoyed reading sympathetic writing about characters--and their plights--whose sort had not previously appeared much in my reading. However, as the plot unfolded things went downhill. The anomalies--an advanced medical student who just aced a unit on midwifery who cannot tell the difference between an actual pregnancy and a feigned one is the one that bothered me the most, though the baby-snatcher's easy fate is a close rival--plus the completely contrived and equally unbelievable mystery completely wrecked the rest of the book for me. And I felt like the snappy bow of an ending insulted my intelligence as a reader.

I could imagine a successful novel that began with these anomalies and contrivances, but that would require at least another hundred pages of unpacking what is really going on that enables a male medical student to invest himself in saving a vulnerable female he runs across based only on the most superficial look, or what might drive a parent to take a teenaged child's rejection too much to heart. Fremlin obviously has the insight into human motives such a novel would require, but she settles here for the worst of both worlds. I don't think I'll be looking for any more of her work.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel took me straight back to the 1980's and the seemingly constant talk about teenage pregnancies at the time. Fremlin has become a favourite author and I am delighted her novels are now back in print. She really deserves to find a new readership as she was such a good writer.

The central character of this short novel is Miranda, still at school and delighting with her friend, Sharon, in having crushes on boys. This crush results in a rather unromantic interlude and Miranda finds herself the centre of attention at school and at home.

I don't wish to give away spoilers but, as the blurb says (so no spoiler there), she ends up running away from home and faking a pregnancy. Of course, no pregnancy lasts forever and, rather like Mary I who took to her bed and ended up having face the gossip of the Court when no heir emerged, Miranda is unsure what to do and how to end the situation she is in.

There is a twist. For once I guessed it, so I suppose it could not be too clever, but still. This was a short book, but I whizzed through it and, as always, Fremlin asks some difficult questions about how women negotiate the world they are in.

[Boris Cesnik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guessed right and I don't like it...although I didn't believe I was right. I thought Celia must have concealed a last minute nasty twist. You better ignore anything your mind tells you while reading her books. You always end up a fool, dumb and ignorant 'til the bitter end.

But the one and only time so far where I was right and I don't like it.

Despite all this which would have left me a sore and sour loser, I have to acknowledge this was a rather different story and writing to the other Celia's books. That precious story telling talent is still pretty much shovelled in your face and I like it. Yes shovelled is the right word but this time in a much more fast-paced narrative, with a myriad of back and forth episodes, some gruelling blackouts (what-s-going-on-here, where-is-she), insidious characters not fully developed but familiarly recognisable and savoured.

No I didn't find or believe there is any 'social observation' in this book - it's just human being's psyche living in a social environment..now anything can happen.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not one of the author's best in my opinion. There was not one character that I found likeable, or very much believable.
The thing this author is good at, is the twists at the end.


I may write more when I have had more time to think about it, as I do not want to spoil it for others