No Life for a Lady
Historical fiction usually takes itself seriously, often very seriously. Readers seldom turn to it for light relief. No Life for a Lady is an exception. The blurb calls it ‘the most joyful book of 2023’. Although 2023 still has some time to run, it may yet be true. The underlying comic thread is the impossibly naïve narrator, Violet, a young(ish) spinster who keeps house for her widowed father (or is he a widower?) in the genteel Victorian seaside town of Hastings in Sussex. Unworldly she may be, but she sets herself a challenge: to find her mother who disappeared ten years earlier and whom she believes is still alive. The journey leads her into a world of pimps, prostitutes and pornographers, the seamy underside of the Victorian seaside, like an Alice in Wonderland increasingly amazed at her discoveries. Of course, it all works out well in the end, and Violet not only finds her mother but also True Love. My only cavil is that even in 1896 one could surely never have caught a train from London Bridge to Buxton.
