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A review by anniew415
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
4.0
Woah. Dirty, bloody, gory, smelly and full of sang-froid. I suppose I should know better than to have expected a happy ending (I can be so naive.) Donoghue has made a modern re-telling of a story of a very bad girl whom you're still rooting for no matter how evil she proves herself to be. Has she been misled? Was it a matter of circumstance & environment, or is she really poisoned at the core? You have no idea until the final few pages (at least I didn't.) Very Tess of the D'Urbervilles meets Becky Sharp meets... well, to name someone else would give it away.
As a fashion person I also loved the sartorial details. Amazing! Went back to my costume encyclopedias to look up some of the terms just to make sure I knew what the silhouettes were and how they all went together. 1760s are a little bit before what we commonly see (most fashion histories begin around 1780s with the French Revolution), and while similar, there are differences.
This book would make an AMAZING film...
As a fashion person I also loved the sartorial details. Amazing! Went back to my costume encyclopedias to look up some of the terms just to make sure I knew what the silhouettes were and how they all went together. 1760s are a little bit before what we commonly see (most fashion histories begin around 1780s with the French Revolution), and while similar, there are differences.
This book would make an AMAZING film...