‘Vivid, bawdy and bitter’ THE TIMES
‘A first-rate first novel . . . pungent, raunchy dialogue . . . passages of fine understated wit’ IVAN GOLD, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Pat Barker’s first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world.
There’s Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married and already pregnant. Old Alice is welcoming her impending death whilst Muriel helplessly watches the decline of her stoical husband.
And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.
‘A first-rate first novel . . . pungent, raunchy dialogue . . . passages of fine understated wit’ IVAN GOLD, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Pat Barker’s first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world.
There’s Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married and already pregnant. Old Alice is welcoming her impending death whilst Muriel helplessly watches the decline of her stoical husband.
And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.
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Reviews
The novel's point is life, and how rich and hard it is, and the different ways people have of toughing it through the pain without being crushed
A first-rate first novel . . . pungent, raunchy dialogue . . . passages of fine understated wit
They are gritty ... but it is not a cheap grit, rather one that has been ground out, grain by grain, in order to give a realistic picture of life as it was - and remains today for many in forgotten pockets up and down the country
Vivid, bawdy and bitter
