With its many vivid
characters and detailed world building, this book reads like a Charles Dickens
novel if that author had lived to describe the Roaring Twenties in London.
The novel focuses on the glitzy and sleazy nightlife in London in 1926. The owner of several nightclubs is Nellie Croker who has built an empire of six shrines of gaiety/dens of iniquity. Chief Inspector John Frobisher sets out to topple that empire: “It was not the moral delinquency – the dancing, the drinking, not even the drugs – that dismayed Frobisher. It was the girls. Girls were disappearing in London. At least five he knew about had vanished over the last few weeks. Where did they go? He suspected that they went in through the doors of the Soho clubs and never came out again.” The bodies of some girls have washed up in the Thames. Frobisher enlists the help of Gwendolen Kelling, a former war nurse and discontented librarian from York, who comes to London to find two 14-year-old girls, Freda Murgatroyd and Florence Ingram, who have fled to the city in hopes of careers on stage. Gwendolen infiltrates Nellie’s queendom and becomes exposed to the machinations of the Crokers and others wanting to bring down the queen.
There are numerous colourful characters: the ruthless Nellie and her six children (Niven, Edith, Ramsey, Betty, Shirley, Kitty), the melancholic Frobisher and his troubled wife, star-struck Freda and her naïve friend Florence, corrupt policemen, a back alley abortionist, pickpockets, hedonistic socialites, sex workers, and gangsters. My favourite character is the plucky and competent Gwendolen. She is more astute than Frobisher, and because of her war experience, remains calm and cool regardless of circumstances. Her witty exchanges and not taking herself too seriously add some lighthearted notes to a novel set in the dark underbelly of London.
And there is indeed darkness: poverty, corruption, robberies, drug usage, alcoholism, gambling, prostitution, sexual assaults, gang violence, suicide, missing women, and murders. Certainly, all seven deadly sins make an appearance. The novel makes repeated reference to the trauma of the war that ended less than a decade earlier: “War was a foul thing. It should be sent back to the hell where it had come from and never let out again.” Gwendolen and Nellie’s eldest son Niven were both in the war and both think of it in derogatory terms: “At no point in the war or after . . . did Niven ever think anyone had won” and “Gwendolen had known men in the war whose nerves had not just been frayed but shredded by the abominations they had witnessed” and “the insanely stupid bastards in government who thought war was necessary and good.”
There are frequent shifts in perspective: certainly more than a dozen. The omniscient narrator takes the reader into the consciousness of Nellie, Frobisher, Gwendolen, and Freda several times, but also into the minds of many secondary characters. As a consequence, it is not possible to see anyone as one-dimensional. Nellie is an appealing anti-hero, and even villains have some positive traits.
There are also many coincidences. Objects like a demonic doorknocker, a bluebird brooch, and a silver penknife appear more than once and connect disparate characters. Characters also meet with improbable frequency. For instance, Frobisher has a chance encounter with Freda without realizing who she is. The coincidences in Dickens’ novels usually involve unexpected connections between a relatively small number of people, and that is the case here: Gwendolen and Niven, Freda and Ramsey, and Edith and Maddox. Atkinson is well aware of the number of coincidences because she even comments, “And then at that moment an extraordinary coincidence.”
This book can be described as an experimental genre. Ramsey Croker, a wannabe author, begins a novel he describes as unwieldy: ‘it was a crime novel, but it was also ‘a razor-sharp dissection of the various strata of society in the wake of the destruction of war’.’’ Atkinson’s book can be described as historical fiction with elements of a crime drama and romance, as well as satire. It is not, however, unwieldy. I loved the commentary on human foibles whether that is the description of Nellie and dictators as “hard-nosed yet occasionally mawkishly sentimental” or an older man as “foolishly flattered by the attentions of a younger woman . . . a story as ancient as the Greek gods themselves.” Some of the insights are more affecting: Freda meets a friend who behaves like a “jaded metropolitan girl” but Freda realizes “If you looked carefully, beneath the heavy makeup and the strained, tired eyes, the real Cherry was probably still in there trying to protect herself.”
Like all of Atkinson’s books, I enjoyed this one. It has all those elements which I like and have come to associate with her, regardless of the genre: a complicated plot, eccentric characters, literary allusions, erudite vocabulary, and insights into human nature delivered with compassion and humour. This is an entertaining and immersive read.
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