Part of the Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky trilogy, this little novel explores how Jenny, the antagonist in The Midnight Bell, became a prostitute.
Patrick Hamilton has been compared to Dickens, presumably because his novels are set in the pubs and among the poor people of London but Hamilton's characters are much less exaggerated and believably real. Hamilton was also a playwright and his descriptions of settings are like the descriptions of a set on stage, with the scenery and the props and the entrances and exits. There are many moments of authorial voice but much of this book is narrated through the eyes of Jenny, as she struggles with temptation.
Selected quotes:
- "Paradoxically, at no time of life is existence so intensely physical as in old age. ... It is not with beauty and seemly abstractions, but with pills and digestive expedients, that the superannuated await release in death." (Ch 1)
- "They were seen as hideous old women without past or future, and it was imagined that they were this because they had somehow decided to be so." (Ch 1)
- "In fairness to his waistcoat, which would otherwise have shared his supper, it was necessary to tie a large napkin around the Doctor's neck." (Ch 1)
- "To make people good it is advisable not to tell them to be good, but to tell them that they are good." (Ch 1)
April 2023; 114 pages
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