Trespass

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With its intense olfactory workout, The Great Stink won't be to everyone's taste, but it's a rich work of history and a gripping exploration of the unmentionable currents that run beneath the surface of our lives -- and it reeks of talent. ·

The Great Stink by Clare Clark - AbeBooks The Great Stink by Clare Clark - AbeBooks

Book ring book for Bookcrossing.com . I had forgotten all about this one. Must read and send on before Apr 4. Set in the year 1718, this book follows young Eliza Tally as she leaves her small hometown to work as a maid for a London apothecary. In return for her labor, it is agreed that he will help her abort her unborn child. Clare Clark’s seventh novel , her first book to be set in the contemporary world, explores one of the defining scandals of recent times: from the 1980s to the present day, undercover police officers infiltrated activist groups in the UK. They developed sexual relationships with their targets as part of their cover, in some cases fathering children. This story was brought to public attention by the unmasking and subsequent disclosures of the former undercover officer Mark Kennedy. It was also exposed in the Guardian by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, whose landmark work, Undercover, is credited as the source material for Trespass. A novel about love — and state-sanctioned impunity … Paranoid fantasy or reality? Brilliant, chilling’– Helena Kennedy QCAside from that minor caveat, I would recommend this book. It can be read simply for the pleasure of the author' prose, characters and story; or one can read it for the pleasure of exploring the baser instincts of human beings and what they drive us to do. Like her other novel, The Nature of Monsters, Clare Clark accomplishes two things with The Great Stink. One, is a powerful (and queasily wonderful) evocation of the sights, sounds and smells of a by-gone London. In this case, the city of the Victorian Age c. 1860. The greatest city in the world is drowning in its own filth, and Parliament has reluctantly begun funding an enormous public works project that will modernize the capital's sewers. Say what you like about Clark's other qualities as a writer but even her harshest critics must admit to a marvelous facility for describing urban life that is vivid and economical - using just the correct amount of adjective and simile to create 19th century London (at least the London that existed for most of its inhabitants - unhealthy, foul, and full of men and women brutalized almost beyond humanity by the misery of their lives). As with Monsters, Clark's tale plots the development of a person's humanity. In the case of William, a person who's lost his and must find a way to regain it or go mad. In the case of Tom, a person who knows there's a void in his life but doesn't know what it is or how to fill it. Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ This was a most unusual book. A murder mystery set in Victorian England does not invoke anything out of the ordinary but... this story revolves around the woefully inadequate sewage system and an engineer who was chosen to assist in the design to modernize it. The main character, William May, is a truly disturbed man whose effort to tame his demons, within the literal bowels of the great city, fails him on every level.

Trespass by Clare Clark - review by Tom Williams Trespass by Clare Clark - review by Tom Williams

Then why are we stopping? I told you, I’m desperate for the toilet.’ Tess nodded absently, staring out towards the sea. Conversely, Long Arm Tom is a much more interesting character. He is deeply flawed, but flawed in a way that advances the story. Sidney Rose is likewise flawed, but much less well drawn and a late addition to the "cast". I wish the author had put May aside, referred to him indirectly, and focused more on Long-Arm Tom and Sidney Rose. May is a "McGuffin", not a main character. He is the reason for the story, but does not resolve it. As a teenager, Tess falls into environmental activism – and the arms of an older, charismatic protester. She has never been happier. When he suddenly disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone, she is shattered. Slowly, though, she rebuilds a life for herself and her daughter Mia. ‘We’re all we need,’ she sings to Mia as they dance around the kitchen. ‘Me and you, us two.’ Tess looked at the letter for a long time. With each sentence she felt Sylvie’s hands on her shoulders, turning her against herself. When it was time to fetch Mia from school, she tore the letter into small pieces and put them in the bin. Later that night she took them out again and burned them in the kitchen sink. Mia couldn’t read and she couldn’t reach the bin but Tess couldn’t shake the fear that she would find the torn-up words and put them together. That somehow the words would find her. As an arts journalist and theatre critic, Laura has written regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph and Time Out London. She also writes non-fiction, short stories, and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University and has mentored for the Arts Emergency and Spread the Word.It's a fast read, but the prose gets tedious quite fast too. I understand that the author is a history expert of some sort, and that the early 18th century setting of the story calls for a style of writing that matches the time. But it seems unbelievable that a book written from the point of view of a midwife's daughter should contain ample servings of similes, metaphors, and an extensive vocabulary! The author goes overboard with her descriptions and prose, perhaps because of a deep love for that period in London's history. I can understand that. So I soldiered on until halfway through when I got to this sentence: "I swallowed a blade of dread so sharp that it seemed to pierce my gullet." That was all I could take. These midwives' daughters, they really should learn the meaning of restraint. In the garden the ants were taking flight, clouds of them swirling upwards like ash from a bonfire. When Tess closed her eyes, the ants went on rising in the darkness, only now the swirls were silver. The smell was solid and brown as the river itself," she writes of the Thames, from which Londoners drew their drinking water. "It grinned its great brown grin and kept on going, brazen as you like, a great open stream of shit through the very centre of the capital, the knobbles and lumps of rich and poor jostling and rubbing along together, faces turned up to the sky. . . . The water was so dense and brown it seemed that it should bear a man's weight." Set in the 1700’s. The book starts out with a woman fleeing from a devastating fire. Then it jumps ahead 50 or so years and we meet Eliza who is a young woman all worked up over a sexy young man. The opening scene was something akin to an erotica novel but you won’t hear me complain. Eliza’s mother is the local midwife but fears being accused of witchcraft and wants to have her daughter safely wed to someone with lots of cash and property before it happens. Thus she encourages her daughter towards the wealthy and randy young fellow and performs a hand fasting ceremony. Pregnancy immediately follows and once the dupe realizes he isn’t legally wed he hightails it out of there and she’s left penniless, ruined and nauseous because of the “worm” in her belly. Ah, the best laid plans.

The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark | Goodreads The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark | Goodreads

Let me begin with a warning: this is not a book for someone with a weak stomach. Expect to come across gruesome, vile, downright revolting, in-depth descriptions of Victorian London’s notorious underground sewer which was responsible for its reputation as the filthiest city in the world in the mid 1800s. An aside: The great stink of London was so all-pervasive that even distinguished medical professionals attributed the frequent outbreaks of cholera and dysentery to the miasma which they believed was caused by the noxious fumes emanating from the river Thames. This is pre Jospeh Lister times and the link between sanitation and infection was hitherto unknown. A magnificent, nuanced and intricate novel. Trespass is as political as it is personal, both moving and psychologically fascinating ‘ Sadie Jones, author of The Outcast As a teenager, Tess falls into environmental activism - and the arms of a charismatic older protester. When he suddenly disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone, her happiness is shattered. Slowly, though, she rebuilds a life for herself and her daughter Mia. They just called from the hospital,’ Delphine said. ‘Sylvie died.’ Mia looked at Delphine, then at Tess. ‘Mum?’ Clark seems to be good at writing insufferable characters, and the main character Eliza is included in this. She came across as unlikable and dumb (despite being described by others as witty and clever), and I was put off by her fantasies of basically torturing and killing her unborn child, which she always refers to as her "worm." I know that she came to London for an abortion, but she certainly takes it a step further and there seems to be some sort of twisted relish to this.He closes his eyes. Sweat greases his scalp. His head throbs, his hand too. It usually only bothers him when it’s cold. He presses his thumb hard into the scarred skin, presses till the pain is in his shoulder, the base of his skull. He should never have come. It was stupid to think it would help, that it would make things clearer. Stupid and deluded. In the early 1700 and young woman finds herself pregnant by a man she believed to be her husband only to find that her marriage isn't recognized by the law and he no longer wishes her. She is shipped off to London and found herself a servant and prisoner of an apothecary that is interested in research concerning birth defects. What she comes to find here is horendous. The apotecary, who is addicted to opium, is trying to create a monster and is using a young woman with mental defects to perform his experiments on by getting her pregnant by himself. Not to Eliza and Mary are both being kept as prisoners, considered property of the apothecary. He succeeded in creating a monster however, himself and his wife. The birth defects do not make a person a monster. Mary, considered an idiot, was a kind and gentle person and the treatment she rec'd at the hands of the real monsters was horendous. I really enjoyed these characters,especially Long Arm Tom and his relationship with Lady, the dog. I thought the details were wonderful, the intrigue or mystery part of the story was well done and I liked the resolution of the story. All in all I was very pleased with this book and I'm looking forward to reading more from Clare Clark.

Clare Clark Clare Clark

Complex, profound and devastatingly timely, this brilliant psychological suspense explores the twisted world of undercover operations, the most secretive part of the secret state where nothing is sacred and no one cares to count the cost. This book is shitty. No, honestly, it's shitty. Any book titled "The Great Stink" better deliver, and this one does in the shittiest possible way. The book opens with a particularly lurid masturbation scene. It proceeds to drag us through a few chapters of sex scenes and descriptions of Eliza's quite healthy sexual appetite. I don't mind erotic themes in novels, but these came across as so off-putting due to the bizarrely grotesque way they were written (more on that coming up). Alla fine della lettura, ho potuto dividere il romanzo in due parti: la prima, in cui Eliza vuole abortire a tutti i costi, e la seconda, in cui Eliza vuole salvare Mary. Questi erano i grandi obiettivi attorno a cui ruotavano i pensieri della protagonista, e purtroppo non erano abbastanza.I really enjoyed this dirty, grimy, gritty novel set in London in 1855. Clare Clark takes her time familiarizing the reader with the polluted and overpopulated city and it's filthy and inadequate sewer system. She creates interesting characters set in a vivid and richly textured setting and takes her time laying this dark and sometimes disturbing ground work before creating the tension of conflict for her characters. She describes the many horrid smells of London in graphic detail and reveals the characters to us with story upon story, often transitioning from past to present with surprising ease.