Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue (2002, 438 pages)

Emma Donoghue is one of Ireland's leading authors.  I have previously read and posted on her novel about an Air India hostess, Landing, and several of her short stories.  Slammerkin is a first rate work of historical fiction set in England around 1750.  It is the life story of of a girl, Mary Saunders, who began working as a prostitute in the very mean streets of London at age fourteen.  For her first trick she was paid a bright ribbon.  Donoghue does a great job of bringing the nightmarish streets of London to life for us.   Mary is thrown out of her home by her mother when she finds out she prostituted herself.  On the streets at fourteen, she had only one real option, sell herself.  The clientele are universally brutal. Most sex acts take place leaning against a wall or in some horrible venue. Oral sex is considered very outrageous.  Clients concerned about venereal disease sometimes opt for hand jobs. Mary develops total contempt for men.   In one very amusing scene she encounters James Boswell and Samuel Johnson.  Boswell tells her maybe later and Johnson advises her to quit the streets.  She soon meets a older girl, Doll, who shows her the ropes.  The girls drink as often as they can, mostly the cheapest gin, rob their customers, and live really for hour to hour.  One bad thing after another happens.  Venereal disease is the scorage of the streets, no aids yet.  Some drives Mary out of London and she becomes a servant at a family her mother knew long ago.  More terrible things happen.

There is a lot of violence and nasty sex.  

This is a grim novel, the streets are filthy and dangerous, men are animals, women are all in the world view of Mary, basically whores, some are just better paid.  There is terrible cruelty in this world.  Nothing good lasts.  

Slammerkin is first rate historical fiction.  Donoghue has written two other novels set in  18th century 

England and I hope to read them one day.  This is a grim work with no uplifting features.

"The Lost Seed" by Emma Donoghue (2012)

I liked the Emma Donoghue story, "The Gift", which posted on two days ago that I decided to read the remaining story by her in the same anthology.  Like "The Gift" it is historical fiction set in the United States.  "Lost Seed" takes place in the first Puritan colonies, the school in America version of these colonies is that they came seeking religious freedom.  The more complicated truth is that they wanted the freedom to practice terrible religious oppression and the right to impose their sexual morals on all others.  Deviation from the rules often meant death.  

The story is told in the very well realized person of an unmarried man who totally believes in the rigid sexual laws of the colony.    He desperately wants a wife but the women, girls to us, either do not suit him or don't want him.   He has turned in several people to the authorities for real or imagined sexual acts he has seen them doing while looking in their windows.  He wants them banned or executed.  Soon no one will speak to him.  

I won't spoil the perfect ending of this story for you.  I read this story and "The Gift" in this high value anthology.

Mel u

"The Gift" by Emma Donoghue (2012)

I have previously read and posted on several short stories by Emma Donoghue (Dublin, 1969) and her novel about an Air India hostess, Landings.  I was very happy to find two of her short stories included in an anthology of short stories I have. 

"The Gift" is a an epistolatory short story.  This is not a format one sees much at all so I was very curious to read the story.  It begins in March 1877 in New York City, a single mother writers a letter to a children's home telling them her heart breaks but she must give them custody of her daughter for whom she cannot care.  I was fascinated by the letters from the home to the mother in which we could see the daughter slowly develop.   We also can follow the life of the mother as she marries and tries to get her daughter back.  A wonderful loving couple on a farm in Iowa adopt the girl and we see her develop.   There is great sadness in the story as we see the great pain in the letters of her mother but the great gift of true asking for nothing in return love given to the daughter by her adoptive parents was deeply moving.  

I have a copy of her historical novel Slammerkin and I hope to read it soon.  

Mel u

Landing by Emma Donoghue (2007)

Landing by Emma Donoghue (1969, Dublin) is a romance novel centering on a 39 year old air hostess of Indian and Irish parentage living in Dublin and a much younger Canadian woman from a small town in Ontario named "Ireland".   The Canadian woman is the curator of a small regional history museum.    

The story starts out on an international flight from Toronto to London.   The seat mate of the Canadian woman dies in flight and the air hostess deals with the death and helps the woman cope in a version of the "cute meet" of future lovers.  We see their relationship develop through e mail.  The story centers on the nature of long distance relationships. 

What I liked best about this  novel was the settings in Dublin and seeing how the air hostess (don't dream of calling them "stews") viewed her work.  There is some sex in the novel but it is mild stuff. There are some interesting scenes about gay life in Dublin.   The male minor gay characters are a bit one dimensional.

This is a well written book that might be good light reading on a long flight.   

Mel u

"Seven Pictures Not Taken" by Emma Donoghue

"Seven Pictures Not Taken" by Emma Donoghue (2000, 12 pages)

The Irish Corner:  A Celebration of the Irish Short Story

March 11 to July 1

 Irish Breakfast for all Participants


Emma Donoghue

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

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Please consider joining us for this event.     Everything you need to participate is in the resources page, including links to 1000s of short stories, from brand new ones to stories now in the public domain.    Guests posts are also welcome.

Emma Donoghue (Dublin, 1969) is a very prolific highly successful much awarded author.  Her novel, The Room, was short listed for the Booker Prize.   She also is a very prolific short story writer.  (The story I am posting on today is reprinted in The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing, published in 2000.  They do not give the original publication date.  To all future editors of collections of short stories, please include the date when the story was first published.)  I have previously posted on her great short story, "Visiting Hours".

"Seven Pictures Not Taken"  is about a five day  love affair between two women.   It is structured so you do not know that both people in the affair are women until you are nearly half way through.  This made, or it made me at least, rethink my reaction to the relationship of the two lovers.   The affair is very passionate from the start.   One of the women is reminiscing about their affair by looking seven pictures that were taken over the course of a five day weekend, only they are not real pictures but virtual ones in her mind.  The story does a great job of letting us see how we reconstruct the past out of moments recalled.  It is very erotic but without any explicit passages.  

You can learn a lot about Donoghue and her work from her official web page.  

Here is her official biography

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic, Henry James Professor at New York University).  I attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten.  In 1990 I earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French).  I moved to England, and in 1997 received my PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, I have earned my living as a writer, and have been lucky enough to never have an ‘honest job’ since I was sacked after a month as a chambermaid. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 I settled in London, Ontario, where I live with Chris Roulston and our son Finn (8) and daughter Una (4).

"Now this is my kind of story'-
Carmilla

Please share your experiences with Emma Donoghue with us.

I hope to read Room this year.

Mel u

"Visiting Hours" by Emma Donoghue

"Visiting Hours" by Emma Donoghue (2011, 6 pages)

I first became aware of Emma Donoghue when she was shortlisted in 2010 for the novel, The Room.   I was not sure I would appreciate the content of this book, told from the point of view of a very young child held captive along with his mother by an abductor so I have not tried to read it yet.


Recently in order to expand my knowledge of contemporary Irish Short Stories, partially in preparation for Irish Short Stories Week Year II in March,  I purchased a Kindle edition of New Irish Short Stories (2011) selected and introduced by Joseph O'Connor.   His most recent novel, Ghost Light was picked as the Dublin "One City, One Book" selection for 2011.    "Visiting Hours" by Emma Donaghue was included in this collection so I was happy to be able to try out a story by her. (Dublin, 1969)


"Visiting Hours"  starts out in the newly born ward of a hospital.   The story is told from the point of view of one of the women working there.   The story focuses mostly on the narrators observations on the people in the ward.   The story is really in part about how her work has changed her perceptions.   You can see she is oriented toward result driven activities.   The narrative rhythm of the story also conveys this point.   At times I found the narrative voice a bit "sing songish" and forced but the story kept my attention for the six pages.   The style was interesting and there were lots of interesting and perceptive remarks made in passing.   I admit I still do not know if I would want to read Room but I now might.    I enjoyed this story a lot.


You can learn more about the writings of Donaghue at her webpage.


I hope you will consider joining us for Irish Short Stories Week in March.   All you will be asked to do is post on any Irish short story you like and let me know about it so we can all share in the experience.




Mel u