Tough heroine, unfriendly world in The Linnet Bird.
Written: Jul 28 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A nontraditional historical novel with an unusual heroine.
Cons: The book gets pretty nasty in spots. Not for light reading.
The Bottom Line: A look at the underworld of nineteenth century England and India, told from the perspective of a former child prostitute. Interesting, but ultimately disappointing.
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| telynor's Full Review: Linda Holeman - The Linnet Bird |
One of the more popular themes in novels, especially historical ones, is to have our hero or heroine start off in desperate straits and follow their climb to respectibility and riches. Sometimes this works, and othertimes it doesn't at all. Novelist Linda Holeman takes the tale of a young girl in deep poverty, then follows her along her struggle to find security and possibly happiness in The Linnet Bird.
Growing up poor along in the Mersey in 1820's Liverpool is a tough one for Linny Gow. Working alongside her mother in a bookbindery, Linny is no stranger to hard work, but after her mother dies of poverty and overwork, Linny finds herself in dire straights as the book opens. At the age of eleven, Linny is sold by her father to a stranger who wants sex with a virgin. So begins this tale of anger and darkness.
We follow Linny's life as a prostitute, first sold by her father to the various sexual deviants and perverts that inhabit Liverpool, while Linny does what she is told, and dreams of murdering her abusers. But one encounter with a murderous pedophile pushes Linny to the unthinkable and she fights back, despite having part of her chest ripped open with shears. Thinking her dead, she wakes to find herself dumped into the river, and only rescued in the nick of time. This time, she does not go back to her father, but starts working the streets in earnest. By the time that she is seventeen, Linny is hardened and cold, and pregnant.
But an encounter with a young man, Shaker, on Guy Fawkes Day changes her life. Shaker comes to her rescue, and pursuades her to come and stay with him and his mother, a widow stricken with epilepsy after Linny looses her child. Slowly, despite her misgivings, Linny discovers that this life just might be the way to rescue herself. She learns manners and how to behave in polite society, and despite Shaker's obvious devotion and love for her, when a friend needs a companion to come with her to India in search for a husband, Linny takes the offer.
With Faith, a giddy, middle class girl, Linny joins what was known as "the Fishing Fleet," the hopeful young British girls who headed off to Calcutta to find husbands in the male population of English adventurers. With men outnumbering the women by three-to-one, it should be easy for a pretty girl like Linny to find a suitable husband. And she makes friends with a newlywed young woman, Meg, who doesn't seem to mind that people might be taken aback by her strong opinions.
An offer, an unusual one, is made for Linny. But will she accept the offer of wealth and status? And will her dark secret of her sordid past come to haunt her?
Alright, by this point I was seriously wondering at the author's motivations in dragging poor Linny through hell on earth only to pack her off to India. And to be honest, by this time, I was finding Linny not only to be distasteful with her cold heart and even stranger behavior, but the author seemed to delight in showing the reader every possible nasty tendency that people can come up with. There are countless depictions of poverty, illness, greed, stupidity and all the other ills of humanity, but then glosses over the more pleasant aspects of living.
While I found the author's research into the lives of wealthy English living in India very well done and full of information, and the writing style to be crisp and engaging, it was the general tone of the plot and especially the characters that made this book one I will never reread, or to be honest, recommend. By the end, I could care less about Linny and her friends -- one commits suicide after marrying a half-caste young man, and other becomes addicted to opium smoking. Linny makes a disaster of her life, rushing from one predictament after another, and throws away her chances at real happiness.
Most of all, it was the descriptions of child molestation that made me ill to read about. I can understand the writer wanting to show the reader how grim it was, but did she have to linger over the abuse, drawing it out with every adjective and adverb? Throughout the book, Linny is abused, beaten, raped, and treated with distain. It's hardly escapist reading, and while I do applaud the try it makes at social conciousness, it's such a vile read that I honestly can not recommend it to anyone. It is, sadly, just an average book, which is too bad, as it could have been so much more with a little care and empathy from the author.
The Linnet Bird
Linda Holeman
2004; Crown Publishers, Random House, Inc.
ISBN 1-4000-9739-8
Recommended:
No
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telynor
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