Scan barcode
harryr's review
3.0
More obscure London Victoriana being brought to light by Lee Jackson. This one is a lively novel about a working class girl I can only describe as 'feisty' (sorry) who starts off as a teenage gang member and ends up… well, let's not give spoilers.
The main thing is that this is genuinely readable and entertaining.
The phonetic spelling out of accents is a bit of a mixed blessing though: generally it adds colour in a good way, although sometimes it did trip me up, with words like 'esitite' and 'runnygide', where I had to take a second run at them to work out what they meant.
Most curious is the spelling of the heroine's name: Mord Em'ly. This is supposed to be a phonetic rendering of how she pronounces Maud Emily; but I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to indicate. With my accent Mord and Maud are perfect homophones, so either there's a vowel-change there I don't know about or it's pure eye-dialect, meant to give a general impression of uncouth speech without referring to a real change in pronunciation: in which case you'd think he could have picked a different name for his heroine.
I assume, incidentally, that it's not supposed to indicate an actual 'r' sound, although I suppose I could be wrong about that.
Anyway, this is a short, fun novel that's worth reading .
The main thing is that this is genuinely readable and entertaining.
The phonetic spelling out of accents is a bit of a mixed blessing though: generally it adds colour in a good way, although sometimes it did trip me up, with words like 'esitite' and 'runnygide', where I had to take a second run at them to work out what they meant.
Most curious is the spelling of the heroine's name: Mord Em'ly. This is supposed to be a phonetic rendering of how she pronounces Maud Emily; but I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to indicate. With my accent Mord and Maud are perfect homophones, so either there's a vowel-change there I don't know about or it's pure eye-dialect, meant to give a general impression of uncouth speech without referring to a real change in pronunciation: in which case you'd think he could have picked a different name for his heroine.
I assume, incidentally, that it's not supposed to indicate an actual 'r' sound, although I suppose I could be wrong about that.
Anyway, this is a short, fun novel that's worth reading .
More...