Slammerkin

Rating:
Summary: Plotless, aimless and sexually graphic
Review: This book earns 2 stars from me because it does provide fine detail of the fashions of the mid 1700's. For a historical fiction piece, it seems accurate in it's depiction.

However, the plot is wandering and pointless. The main character, Mary, lacks personality. And the repeated references to sex acts rapidly gets old. I do not recommend this story.

Rating:
Summary: No Respite (Closer To 4 Stars)
Review: Emma Donoghue has written a very engaging piece of historical fiction. The facts available to her were fairly thin, so unlike others who write in this genre, the author was required to create the vast majority of this work. I don't know to what degree book jackets affect the sale of a book, however I came across the book initially without the cover, and had it had a cover I don't think I would have picked it up. I would have been the one to have lost out, for the book is a good if very dark, graphic and unrelentingly grim tale.

The tragic character of this story is Mary Saunders. Her life circumstances in early 18th Century London are extremely grim, Mr. Dickens would read as an optimist by comparison. Mary, unlike other characters is not forced in to her initial act that will see her banished from her home, her family, and will send her through the darkest spots that London has on offer. The persons she will meet with set her firmly in the life of other, "strolling girls". From the very start of her fall she is driven by what appear to be items of little consequence, however they are obsessions to her. It is not hunger or illness that drives her to an act that will begin her tragic path, rather a bit of ribbon, and even for all she sacrifices for this, the color she traded for eludes her.

After a graphic visit to remove the result of her trade for the ribbon, she travels through a series of fits and starts that offer a more traditional life. The author raises great hope as she relocates; however even as she joins her relatives she is unable to complete the trip without reverting to old habits. Slammerkin refers to a certain type of dress and a defined type of woman. This dual meaning is carried throughout the book as a slammerkin is not really worn by its female counterpart. Mary Saunders is also continually attempting to define who she is, yet she always ends by leading two very different lives while simultaneously deceiving those that would help her.

The book states, "Clothes make the woman, and, Clothes are the biggest lie ever told". Her preoccupation with life's finery and the lie she lives to achieve the fiction they represent not only ensure she will never recover herself, but ultimately will bring her own ruin. The book is a good albeit very grim read.

Rating:
Summary: A loose dress, a loose woman
Review: This book operates on two levels. On the one hand, it is the story of Mary, a girl who sells her virginity for (literally) a little colour in her life, and how that action leads her to a life of a streetwalker, something that she can not escape no matter how hard she tries. This story in itself is an interesting read, with its fabulous description of the seedy side of life in London of the 1760s, especially Donoghue's description of clothing. (For the record, a Slammerkin is a type of dress that was favoured by prostitutes, which came to be a slang word for the profession). If youa re looking for some great historical fiction, with a good balance between historical detail, plot, and character development, you should try this novel.

On another level, this is a story that explores the idea of how much of our lives is made up by your own decisions, and how much is fate? It also works with the premise of how one bad decision can effect the whole direction of our lives. Mary's losing of her virginity sets of a chain of events that Mary only seems to be half in control of. She realises that a woman (or in her case a girl - she is only 14) in her world has not much choice, especially if she is pregnant and disowned by her family. Even when she attempts to redeem herself, she is driven by her desperation and lack of other choices to make another decision that will continue to affect her life long after that one night.

We have all made bad decisions in our past. If we are lucky, we move on and don't have to worry about them. If we are like Mary, they will continue to haunt us. Once you have read Slammerkin, you may be wondering if any of your past actions are going to come back to haunt you tomorrow.

Rating:
Summary: Dark and Deeply Gloomy
Review: Just the first 50 pages alone are enough to cast someone into a depression. This, one would think is a bad thing, but was a great way to pull the reader in. What possibly more could happen to this young Londoner Mary Saunders? The author deftly wrote scenes and descriptions to give the feeling around the characters and places. I could very vivdly see the cellar apartment Mary lives in, the clothes they wore, her mother's horrible attitude.

In the following sections of the novel, we find out what happens to Mary in the streets of London. At first Mary is repelled, but soon finds some comfort in being "a girl of her own liberty" along side her new friend Doll. I felt some pity for Mary, as well as hoping she'd pull through, but as the novel went on, her motivations seemed more and more superficial. The girl was a pure teenager: a clothes horse!

This book is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: couldn't put it down
Review: Not all books end with a happy ending. This was definitely one of them. This book was a tough read for me, emotionally. I don't want to ruin the plot but at the very begining of the novel you know that the main character Mary is in a gaol. Which basically is worse than jail. So the rest of the novel decribes her life from the time she's thirteen till the present. What was gut wrenching for me is that you didn't know which act finally caught up with her till the end. Even then she still had this childlike mentality. Which makes you wonder about the choices she made during her life. And whether or not she should stand accountable for her crimes. Mary was a throw away child. It makes you wonder just how many throw away children walk our streets.

Rating:
Summary: A Recommended Read
Review: Slammerkin is a spellbinding novel, there are many twists and turns that leave will leave the reader anxiously turning the pages for more. Donoghue, vividly sets the scene in London, where a young girl, Mary Saunders, was desperate for beauty, this beauty came at a very high cost.

From a ribbon, a rape, and the selling of a body and soul, Slammerkin is more than the story of a prostitute. It is the story of seeking self-freedom and liberty. It is about the choices that we make and their life-long impact.

Mary Saunders, a young girl of fifteen, attempted to leave the trade. She conspired and found a family, one she thought she would not love, she was wrong. Here is where Mary's story begins and the slow destruction that was to follow in Mary's path.

Slammerkin is a novel to savour and share. It is both lively and horrific. I would highly recommend Slammerkin.

Rating:
Summary: A Riveting Tale
Review: This highly engaging story traces class and gender distinctions in 18th century England. Vowing to transcend her mother's squalid life as a piecework seamstress, Mary Saunder's eyes the prostitutes in her London neighborhood and yearns for their bright finery. Motivated by pride and vanity, Mary swaps her virginity (her sole asset) for a piece of ribbon. Finding herself pregnant at 14, she is turned out of her home by her grim mother and, after a horrifying rape, is left to ply the one trade available to a young girl without family or means -- prostitution.

Events make it impossible for Mary to remain in London, so she journeys to her mother's birthplace where she signs on, under false pretenses, as a maid with her mother's childhood friend, the kindly, yet naive, Jane Jones. While helping Mrs. Jones sew and embroider beautiful garments for the local gentry, Mary comes to recognize that the gowns which she purchased in London as a prostitute -- her stock in trade -- were gaudy, poorly tailored and of inferior cloth.

Mary rejects a marriage which will only allow her to "rise a degree in the end." Instead, she yearns to wear silk all day and to sleep late into the morning. Her aspirations are so unrealistic, that Mr. Jones remarks that Mary aspires to a "game of dress-up." This yearning for something better, even if its only a white velvet slammerkin embroidered in silver thread, puts into motion events which can only end in tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Emma Donoghue is an historian, editor and novelist of extraordinary skill. In her latest book, Slammerkin, she combines her talent for research with her gifts for fiction to create an historical novel that is absolutely compelling, utterly engrossing. The real difficulty, in fact, with reading so astonishing a novel is that I am now completely spoiled for lesser fiction. Slammerkin, a word which means a loose dress or a loose woman, is astonishingly rich, written with elegance and style, containing neither an extraneous syllable nor a gratuitous piece of research. Beginning with the meager evidence of a real woman who was condemned for murder in 1763, Donoghue creates a completely believable world, and peoples it with vividly authentic characters. Mary Saunders lives with her mother and stepfather in the most abject poverty, where she "owned nothing with color in it, and consequently was troubled by cravings." When the thirteen year-old Mary becomes pregnant after a brutal rape, her family throws her out on the street, and she learns quickly that the only job in London for a young girl with no skills is prostitution. Thanks to her friend, Doll, Mary learns to work the streets, but when she earns the enmity of the man who sliced Doll's face, she has no choice to flee to Monmouth, hoping that her mother's girlhood friend will offer her assistance. Mary's past, however, cannot be left behind despite her hopes, and she learns that being a servant is as brutalizing as being a prostitute. Poverty, class and despair are the enemies, regardless of occupation. Donoghue has a larger project in Slammerkin than plot, although the plot is always compelling. She enables her readers to experience, through the lives of these remarkable characters, what it might have been like to try to survive in a world with little tolerance for mistakes. Her characters notice what's going on, and comment on what they see. When Mary's new mistress tells her daughter a story about a good servant, for example, Mary is less than enthralled. She hates stories "about virtuous servants whose rewards awaited them in the Hereafter. They made the Mighty Maker sound like the kind of master who was always years in arrears on the wages." We learn that among the desperately poor, bedtime comes with the darkness because there is no spare money for candles or fire. And how do we know this? Because the Mary's Monmouth employers, aching to be seen as better than those around them, "ate supper at seven in the little parlour, very hungry but proud to have waited until such a genteel hour." Mary learns that "light was a clear badge of rank." What is most impressive in this novel is that, despite what must have been years of research, and thousands of notes, Donoghue never includes any piece of information that is not vital for her characters to know. And what characters they are. Let me offer one example of Donoghue's skill at characterization, an example that also serves to illustrate her exquisite use of language. Nance Ash is the wet nurse in the Monmouth household. She became a servant because one long ago night she decided to keep her infant in her bed, instead of in a cradle where he might freeze to death. Nance's husband came home drunk, and in his stupor, rolled over on the baby, and suffocated him. "The thing was, though, that baby had been Nance Ash's only chance. Without her

knowledge, on that one long night all the hope was pressed out of her life. The next day her tiny boy was put in a coffin no bigger than a hatbox, and her husband, blind with gin, called her terrible names and stumbled out into the lane. After three days she knew he was never coming back, no matter how long she waited." Reduced to beggary, Nance finds work for the breasts still filled with her son's milk. Forced into service, she becomes religious, bitter, cold. "But when the moonlight came in the shutters, on nights like this one, Nance Ash couldn't help thinking of how she'd had her single chance and lost it as easy as a leaf might be blown from a tree, simply because she'd slept sound one night seventeen years ago this January, dreaming of God alone knew what. She'd never slept right through a night since. She just wished, now, she could remember what she'd been dreaming of, all those years ago: what was it that had been so sweet she hadn't wanted to wake?"

Rating:
Summary: Great story, solid writing
Review: I couldn't put the book down. Emma Donoghue's descriptions create memorable images on the mind, similiar to Dickens. The main character is complex for which you feel great sympathy for while being sickened by her final horrific act. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: slammerkin: great story...
Review: slammerkin: a great story to read. i thoroughly enjoyed reading it, intrigued in finding out what happens in the following chapter in the story. i unfortunately made the mistake of reading the epilogue notes, which i wish i didn't, so i could have been surprised at the ending. as good as "slammerkin" is, i seem to like "mirabilis" much more, perhaps because i read "mirabilis" first. slammerkin definitely is a good book to get.