Uncle Paul: Welcome to the Nightmare Summer Holiday

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It too has that element of doubt, there mostly others disregarding the protagonist’s fears because she’s a woman and a young mother. Mildred is staying in a nearby clifftop cottage where she honeymooned years ago with her first husband Paul and is not enjoying the eerie atmosphere and lack of creature comforts. She is good at making ordinary domestic situations frightening by slowly turning up the tension and playing on all our fears.

When I spotted that several other Celia Fremlin novels have also been reissued, I was immediately keen to discover more. Meg and Isabel were just girls when "Uncle Paul" married their older half-sister, Mildred, and he soon vanished from their lives upon his exposure as a bigamist and a murderer. She seems largely unknown, but maybe this will be another hit for Faber, and bring her some of the recognition she deserves.What follows is a wonderfully slow burn thriller with the tension ratcheting up by degrees until everyone is at screaming pitch. There’s some marvellous humour here too, especially from the interactions between the various guests at the hotel, from the gallant Captain Cockerill to the stoic Mrs Forrester and her young son, Cedric – one of those insufferable little boys who knows everything and insists on getting his own way. Fremlin's admirably plotted novels and short stories are about people leading lives of quiet or vociferous desperation in suburban backwaters .

It’s a curious combination of wry humour (which I enjoyed), gentle suspense and an ending that rings rather hollow and melancholy. It’s very well constructed, and the balance between tension and domestic dramas works surprisingly well. It was a bit slow and I didn't identify with any of the main characters in the way that I did in her other books. Wanted to get to the end but the story was ridiculous and over wrought (unless the ludicrous lack of communication is how all relationships were conducted in the 1950s) and the denouement farcical.In my mind, she is bracketed with Celia Dale, whose marvellously sinister domestic noir, A Helping Hand, was one of my favourite reads from last year . I really hope Faber decide to reissue a few more of these in similar eye-catching covers to capitalise on Uncle Paul’s success! There's gentle humour too, with character types and scenarios you'd expect to see in any Fawlty Towers or Agatha Christie. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer.