73 Dove Street
London in a damp, drizzly autumn of 1958. Edie Budd escapes from her abusive husband Frank and finds a room in a drab lodging house in the “shabby hinterland” between Ladbrooke Grove and Notting Hill. Edie’s back story of a marriage turned sour and hideous domestic abuse as well as another distressing secret is slowly revealed throughout the narrative. Edie stays in her room hiding away but eventually meets the other lodger in the property, Tommie (female), who is obsessed with a boyfriend who treats her with disdain, while the owner of the house, Phyllis Collier, learns to adjust to life without her husband, whom she caught in flagrante delicto with a former lodger.
This is a London more afflicted by the austerity-dull greys and grubbiness of the immediate postwar years than the bright butterfly of the swinging Sixties that were just around the corner, with its characters still afflicted by the stresses and influence of the war and London’s vulnerability in the conflict. It is an exceedingly well-plotted and capably told story, with well-rounded credible characters that the author clearly likes and makes the reader care for, too. Despite the overall grim mood and subject matter, as it deals with fairly shabby human behaviour especially on the part of the males in the story, elements of it are really quite amusing and wry. Very much recommended.
