Christopher Hart
Grim OOP North
Turn Again Home
By Carol Birch
Sceptre 279pp £17.99
EVER SINCE WINIFRED Holtby's South Riding, novels about clever Northern lasses getting an education and bettering themselves in the world have virtually established a genre of their own. Those like myself, who are the children of the ones who got away, read these stories with a kind of impatience. It's always Grim Oop North, with Mam drudging away, Dad getting drunk and Our Billy going down the mines or into the factories, clinging on to the socialist dream of a better life when not shagging the local girls senseless after beer and skittles. Actually, my Dad's life in Bishop Auckland was nothing like this, and neither, I bet, were those of thousands of other clever and enterprising Northerners. Yet from Hilary Mantel and Margaret Drabble to Catherine Cookson and Edwina Currie, novels depicting life in York, Manchester or Liverpool seem to follow this template.
Looking at Carol Birch's seventh novel, Turn Again Home, you can see why. What is being described is a culture in which culture (as readers of this magazine understand it) has triumphed through endurance. The novel follows several generations of a Manchester family, with Bessie, an illegitimate serving girl, its
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk