A review by kellysmaust
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

4.0

So this is one of Emma Donoghue's earlier books, and while it shows the great promise that was to come in her later works, you can definitely see in this one that she wasn't quite there yet. We've got the historical detail, the skillful writing, the unflinching look at the darker side of our past world, but Slammerkin's Mary Saunders fails to become the unforgettable, sympathetic, nuanced, true-to-life heroine that Donoghue created with Frog Music's Blanche or The Wonder's Lib Wright. Unfortunately, her character suffers from the same problem I had with Kaya in Where the Crawdads Sing - due to difficult choices made in the aftermath of horrific trauma, isolation, and stigma from the "normies," Mary Saunders is considered a monster by society and we feel sorry for the way she is trapped and alone - until she proves them all right by

Spoiler

brutally murdering someone! Seriously, I didn't realize this was based on a real person until I got to the random murder - I was like, there was absolutely no indication that's were this story was going and I don't understand why this happened. This must have been something that happened in real life and so the author put it in. Yep!

There is still much to appreciate in this book, but everything Donoghue was trying to do here she did so much better in [b:Frog Music|18295858|Frog Music|Emma Donoghue|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393227215l/18295858._SY75_.jpg|25778638], so I'd recommend that instead!