Sunday, 2 August 2015

"Love on the Dole" by Walter Greenwood

Squalor and despair set in an industrial town in northern England in the 1930s. No matter how hard you work, you can never earn enough to life yourself out of poverty. You pawn your possessions and darn your clothes, your furniture is rented and if you need to borrow money you must find a local loan shark who will charge you extortionate amounts of interest. Bullies and bookmakers and small time criminals prosper; respectable hard-working people do all they can to stay afloat. Then the local engineering firm gets new machines or finds a cheaper source of labour and you lose your job, any possibility of making ends meet, and your self-respect. You can't even afford to love.

Despite its simplistic storyline and sometimes didactic nature, this is a classic story of penury and hopelessness which has a very real message for today.

August 2015; 256 pages



This review was written by

the author of Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

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