The Great Stink: A Page-Turning Historical Crime Thriller of Victorian London Murder and the Danger Beneath

by Clare Clark

Clare Clark’s critically acclaimed The Great Stink “reeks of talent” (The Washington Post Book World) as it vividly brings to life the dark and mysterious underworld of Victorian London. Set in 1855, it tells the story of William May, an engineer who has returned home to London from the horrors of the Crimean War. When he secures a job trans­forming the city’s sewer system, he believes that he will be able to find salvation in the subterranean world beneath the city. But the peace of the tunnels is shattered by a murder, and William is implicated as the killer. Could he truly have committed the crime? How will he bring the truth above-ground? 

With richly atmospheric prose, The Great Stink combines fact and fiction to transport readers into London’s putrid past, and marks the debut of a remarkably talented writer in the tradition of the very best historical novelists.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mystery, Historical, London, British Literature, Thriller

372 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Clare Clark (b.1967) is the author of The Great Stink, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and The Nature of Monsters.

Clark's novel Beautiful Lives (2012) was inspired by the lives of Gabriela and R.B. Cunninghame Graham.

Reviews

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought this would be a stinker, but I really enjoyed it. 💩

Watch my BookTube deep dive on the weirdest Women's Prize nominees . 👀



"It grinned its great brown grin and kept on going, brazen as you like, a great open stream of shit through the very centre of the capital, the knobbles and lumps of rich and poor jostling and rubbing along together, faces turned up to the sky."

The Great Stink weaves factual people with fiction in a story that takes place in the subterranean world of Victorian England known as the London sewers. Here is a realm of damp walls and putrid smells where two men retreat for very different reasons.

The first man is a war veteran named William May who finds solace from his PTSD in the sewer’s dark, quiet passages. Only there can he momentarily quiet his memories of the Crimean War.

And the second man is Long Arm Tom, a scavenger who gathers rats from the sewers with the help of his faithful dog, Lady. Said rats are then used for rat-bating (a sport which sees them pitted against dogs in an enclosed space surrounded by drunk and sweaty men placing bets on who will be the victor).

When a dead body is found in the sewers, the cause of death is deemed murder, and both men's lives are disrupted. They soon find themselves entangled in a mystery of Dickensian proportions.

This pungent story is ripe with smells and gross descriptions of excrement bobbing in turgid waters. Vivid details emerge of life in Victorian London and the people who populated the bustling city, both in the glittering realms of wealth and the filthiest realms of poverty.

Would recommend this book enthusiastically to fans of The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is shitty. No, honestly, it's shitty. Any book titled "The Great Stink" better deliver, and this one does in the shittiest possible way.

In 1855, William May returns from the Crimean War - shell shocked and without hope. He soon begins a job as an engineer with the city of London as a team of them begins the process of transforming the underground sewers from a fetid cesspool of death and disease into a modern, industrial-age architectural triumph of sanitary efficiency. May begins to find salvation in the dank and eerie sewers as his war-torn demons are slowly being laid to rest. Unfortunately, a murder brings all the demons back with a vengeance as May fights not only for his sanity, but his very life.

Clark crafts a very punguent story; weaving factual people and events with the fictional plotline to create a very compelling story. Not for the squemish or those with a weak stomach. Certainly not readable during snack time or meal time. Clark isn't shy about showing you the slimy, putrid underbelly of Victorian London's sewer system. If nothing else, this book will make you appreciate the comforts of life you take for granted every time you flush the toilet. I know it did for me.

[lucky little cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction Nominee, 2005


Sulfuric gas flames a startling deep blue

This well written page-turner is an amply researched historical mystery which features a 19th century civil engineer, one of the elite group who modernized London's sewer system. If only the brilliant young engineer weren't haunted by shell shock from his violent, soul-crushing sojourn in the Crimea. First-time author Clare Clark also enjoys showing such Dickensian scenes as working class men toshing in the sewers and betting on rat terrier fights. A murder in the sewers reveals a financial scandal that involves almost every major character.

There are a few problems with narrative focus: we hear too much about the engineer's stressed state, and we get more elaborately detailed paragraphs about the Thames effluvia than anyone really needs. Don't read it over breakfast, and you should be fine.

I think I like how the ending played out, but I'm still mulling it over.

keywords: best damned dog ever; is that a knife in your pocket; I feel safest in the sewers; it's madness, I tells ye; now where did I leave my Botanical Guide? hit the deck, it's sewer gas aflame

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clare Clark's first novel starts in the gutter and goes downhill from there. But that's entirely appropriate for her fantastic thriller set in mid-19th century London, where "on a hot day the stink could knock you flat." Most of the action in this outrageous story takes place in the sewers swelling with excrement from 2 million people. If cleaning your bathroom turns you green or the thought of using the toilet plunger raises your gorge, jump immediately to the next review. In this novel, poop happens. And happens. Clark's description of the city is so odoriferous that you'd think it was printed on scratch-'n-sniff paper:

"The smell was solid and brown as the river itself," she writes of the Thames, from which Londoners drew their drinking water. "It grinned its great brown grin and kept on going, brazen as you like, a great open stream of shit through the very centre of the capital, the knobbles and lumps of rich and poor jostling and rubbing along together, faces turned up to the sky. . . . The water was so dense and brown it seemed that it should bear a man's weight."

Before turning up your nose, though, get a whiff of the plot that wafts through this novel. In rich Dickensian detail, Clark creates the whole city teeming with life and decay, but she keeps the focus on a few fascinating characters in desperate straits. Chief among them is William May, an engineer working on the most awesome civil project of the age: the construction of a new sewer system as large and complex as the city above it, complete with its own network of roads and alleys, settling pools for fountains, and pump stations as grand as cathedrals -- an infernal reflection of London, except that it's all pitch black, surging with unspeakable sludge and populated by millions of rats. Commissioned at extraordinary expense and over the objections of London's autonomous boroughs, a new sewer is the last best hope for saving the city from intolerable conditions, including the epidemics of cholera, dysentery and typhoid that sweep through the population with alarming frequency.

William, an emotionally scarred veteran of the Crimean War, throws himself into this work, hoping to quiet the memories of that ghastly military adventure. He reminds himself again and again that a successful engineer is "regular in his habits, steady, disciplined, methodical in his problem-solving." William is ordinarily a paragon of those virtues, but when the pressure of maintaining that regulated life becomes too much for him, he slinks deep into the sewer to slash his arms and thighs with a knife.

Clark has created a tragic, deeply sympathetic man, incapable of reconciling the horrors of his battle experience with the prim regularity of Victorian life. At home, he's a gentle husband to his ferociously cheery wife; at the office, he's an aloof but brilliant engineer. But sometimes -- oh, sometimes -- the strain is overwhelming, and only the knife can relieve him, make him feel alive, provide him with a pain "on the outside . . . something he could hold on to, something he could control." The wincing detail of these self-mutilation scenes raises the novel's pitch -- which is always high -- to a shriek.

Clark can explain everything about the 80 miles of London sewer tunnels from elevation vectors to brick density, but she also knows how to hyperventilate the gothic horror of this subterranean world, soaring into fits of narrative excess that recall the strange pleasure of reading Edgar Allan Poe. With a nod to Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , she follows this poor man as he desperately tries to quell his demons or at least keep them secret. Seeing the scars all over him, his wife wants to believe he's just careless, but his competitors at work are eager to discredit him as a freak. As William's family and professional responsibilities grow, his anxiety about being discovered swells, sending him back underground for more savage cuts in "the one place where the world was steady."

After a particularly severe episode, he awakens to discover that a man he fought with at work has been found brutally stabbed in the sewer. As Clark has devilishly constructed it, the evidence against William couldn't be more damning. Murderous fantasies in his diary don't look good. At this crisis point, William's feverish story merges with the tale of a sewer scavenger named Long Arm Tom and his rat-catching dog. Regularly violating the laws of Parliament and nature to search the sewers, Tom may hold the clue to William's salvation, but he has no reason to give it up, and William's not convinced he deserves salvation anyhow.

Well-researched novels about giant civil-engineering projects have become something of a specialized genre lately -- and they're surprisingly entertaining, even if you're not excited by stress factors and flow rates. Two years ago, John Griesmer's Signal and Noise traced the laying of the first transatlantic cable along with the age's fascination with spiritualism. And last year, in Waterborne , Bruce Murkoff constructed a moving story around the Hoover Dam. How nice to see a woman join the men so successfully with her own engineering novel. (Attention Lawrence Summers!)

With its intense olfactory workout, The Great Stink won't be to everyone's taste, but it's a rich work of history and a gripping exploration of the unmentionable currents that run beneath the surface of our lives -- and it reeks of talent. ·

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

[Jim Loter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just read a gaggle of other reviews on here and I've concluded that it is impossible to summarize The Great Stink without making some kind of pun about malodorousness or shit. Nevertheless, I will try.

The novel lingers on the putrid conditions both above and below the streets of Victorian London. The text practically drips with toxic sludge and noisome fog. Indeed, the city's sewers - in particular, their ineffectiveness - are the primary setting of the story and container of its many plot points. Two parallel plot lines emerge from the fetid reek of the sewage troughs, collide in insanity and violence, and then become entangled as the actual plot kicks in about 2/3 of the way through.

The slow start to the plot is not necessarily a criticism, though I did find the first half a bit slow-going. But Clare Clark does a rather remarkable job describing the city in all its disgusting glory and she crafts fully realized characters who are right at home in the filthy and foul streets, taverns, and catacombs. William May - the sewer engineer with horrific wartime flashbacks and a propensity toward cutting (himself) - is a principled but pathetic man who is too good for the world in which he finds himself. Long Arm Tom, the rat-catcher, is a product of the very miasma that chokes the city - wretched, poor, and desperate. Both men are taken advantage of by cruel characters and must rely on an unlikely savior.

The city of London is as much a protagonist as William and Tom, however. It is a city growing out of control with shamefully inadequate infrastructure - both physical and social - to support the basic functions and needs of its citizenry. In the end, the novel is really about the struggle of civilization to tame the basest and most corrupt elements of human nature - our literal and figurative excrement ... both the shit and the shits.

Dammit; I said I wasn't going to do that...

[Sarah Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

VERY descriptive of sewers. But worth it in the end. Do not try to read this book on a lunch break, unless you are on a diet.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this dirty, grimy, gritty novel set in London in 1855. Clare Clark takes her time familiarizing the reader with the polluted and overpopulated city and it's filthy and inadequate sewer system. She creates interesting characters set in a vivid and richly textured setting and takes her time laying this dark and sometimes disturbing ground work before creating the tension of conflict for her characters. She describes the many horrid smells of London in graphic detail and reveals the characters to us with story upon story, often transitioning from past to present with surprising ease.

I really loved Clare Clark's writing. The following passage is about the main character William May and how he thinks about the sewers;

'To his mind the odour was infinitely more tolerable down in the cold purity of the darkness than it was in the streets above him. In the sewers the smell was simple and direct. In the streets the stink of excrement was but one enemy in an ambush of torments. It knitted itself into the stench of fog and bodies and factories and refuse and the choked tangle of traffic and the never-ending racket and clatter to throttle the senses and make a man mad. In the sewers there was filth and the unpredictable anxieties of tide and the weather but within that there prevailed a kind of order. In the sewers a man might feel himself measured by heights and spans and gradients. A man who had never ventured down into the bowels of the capital, be he a man of London all his life, could surely not imagine such a place. For the man who was there, alone in the darkness, it was London that was impossible to imagine.'

William May is a veteran of the Crimean War and suffers from post traumatic stress, his mental health plays an important roll in this story. He is employed as a surveyor to the Commission of Sewers under Joseph Bazalgette, the chief engineer responsible for reconstructing London's sewers. William is charged with murder and it looks certain that he'll hang for the crime.

Long Arm Tom is a lonely old man who finds comfort in the company of an ugly dog. He makes his living collecting rats from the sewers and selling them to tavern owners like Frank Brassey who runs a rat pit for the Fancy in his parlor. William and Tom spend a fair amount of time in the sewers and eventually their paths cross.

I really enjoyed these characters,especially Long Arm Tom and his relationship with Lady, the dog. I thought the details were wonderful, the intrigue or mystery part of the story was well done and I liked the resolution of the story. All in all I was very pleased with this book and I'm looking forward to reading more from Clare Clark.

If you like reading about the plague I think you will like this book. If you are squeamish and can't stand the thought of reading about rats in sewers with floating human refuse clinging to the walls you might want to try something else.

[Bryce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely uneven; large sections of the book are tremendously compelling, but equally long sections are very, very tedious. Still, the setting is interesting and the characters are unusual. Worth a read.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Stink by Clare Clark (www.Penguin.com)
This book is not for anyone who is at all squeamish about sewers and what goes on in sewers or anyone who has olfactory Synaesthesia that means they can smell something from its description.
I’ll also be grateful that this book isn’t a scratch and sniff version as The Great Stink of the title is the period of London history in the 19th century that led to our current sewer system being built by Bazalgette which is a major part of this fantastic story about William May who is a Surveyor who is involved in the works but is also suffering from PTSD from his time in the Crimean war, his symptoms manifest themselves in hallucinations and episodes of self- harm that are truly stomach churning.
Most of the book is spent in the sewers with William among the toshers and flushers mapping the sewers and working out what needs to be done while having flashbacks and harming himself and we also follow one of the toshers Long arm Tom who is seeking his fortune or at least enough to live on down in the sewers searching for old tosh to sell.
Even when they get above ground this book ends up in the sort of pub that has a “Fancy” where Gents can go and bet on how many rats a dog can kill in a minute or in the dark corners of the Rookery of St Giles. In amongst all this much and mire a murder takes place and all the strands of the story are masterfully pulled together while I finally find out why the suburb of Hell was renamed Padding town or Paddington and why using Padders as slang for the station is just being descriptive of the work that used to go on there when it was London’s outfall sewer and the Padders padded the sewage into bricks to sell as fertiliser to farmers.
The book is both a great dark history lesson and a brilliant murder mystery with all sorts of other elements thrown in and is a great Steam Punk novel at the same time. It is hard to believe that it’s a debut novel and I hope to be reading more books by Clare Clark soon.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know if I was going to be able to get into this book at first. The first two chapters were hard for me to follow and I was a little put off by the fact that there was no dialogue. But once I hit chapter 3 the book just got better and better. I felt as though I could not put it down. Interesting take on historical London. The author made you feel like you were there within the sewers.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was excited to read this. Until I read the first page.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like her other novel, The Nature of Monsters, Clare Clark accomplishes two things with The Great Stink. One, is a powerful (and queasily wonderful) evocation of the sights, sounds and smells of a by-gone London. In this case, the city of the Victorian Age c. 1860. The greatest city in the world is drowning in its own filth, and Parliament has reluctantly begun funding an enormous public works project that will modernize the capital's sewers. Say what you like about Clark's other qualities as a writer but even her harshest critics must admit to a marvelous facility for describing urban life that is vivid and economical - using just the correct amount of adjective and simile to create 19th century London (at least the London that existed for most of its inhabitants - unhealthy, foul, and full of men and women brutalized almost beyond humanity by the misery of their lives).

Like St. Paul's in Monsters, the London sewer is a major character in the novel, dominating the lives of both protagonists.

The second thing Clark accomplishes is another engrossing tale about people growing into their humanity and becoming better for it. The novel follows two men - William May and Long Arm Tom - whose destinies don't cross until the very end of the book, and, even then, they never actually meet. William is a veteran of the Crimean War (1854-56) who returns suffering from what we would recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder. In 1860s London, a veteran doesn't even have a dysfunctional VA to fall back on for support - he's utterly alone and, if he exhibits any abnormal behavior, he is despised, called a coward, and could be sent to an asylum. William finds solace from his demons in the sewers and by cutting himself. He's fortunate in getting a job as one of the engineers on the great project to rebuild London's sewers. There, the orderliness and routine help focus his mind; the dark and filth of the sewers mirrors the "dark and filth" in his mind, and the cutting releases that internal filth into the tunnels under the city. As the months pass, William eventually finds his way back to a semblance of normality. The imperative need to cut becomes less and less, and William actually hopes to lead a normal life with his wife, Polly, and newborn son, Di.

Unfortunately, just when he's reached this plateau, William becomes innocently caught up in a kickback scheme involving a Mr. Hawke, member of the board overseeing the project, and Mr. England, a maker of cheap brick who had hoped to secure a lucrative contract. The circumstances of Mr. England's subsequent murder drive William insane - he suffers a complete breakdown - and he's confined to an asylum, a fate worse than death in those days. Meanwhile, Hawke has framed him for the murder and he faces the gallows.

Long Arm Tom, our second hero, is an older man, a tosher. He lives, like too many others, on the fringes of "decent" society, descending into the sewers to scavenge for the detritus of the better off to sell or to capture the rats sold to enterprising touts for use in the dog fights recently declared unlawful. Though illegal, Victorian "gentlemen" and the uncouth laborers of the city alike relish the spectacle of dogs competing with each other to kill as many rats in a certain time as possible. It's at one of these bouts that Tom runs into Lady - a mangy, disagreeable looking mutt who rests her head on his foot before being dragged off by her abusive master. Later that night, Tom discovers her following him home, her rope leash frayed and broken. Compelled by a need he doesn't understand, Tom lets her come home with him. Lady comes to fill the void in his life where he needs someone to love. Soon they become inseparable companions and he discovers that she's a natural ratter - a veritable rat-killing machine. This "talent" leads Tom to enter her into the dog fights, where she captures the attention of the Captain, who is actually the Mr. Hawke who bedevils William's life. Hawke/Captain offers Tom a substantial sum for Lady, enough for him to live relatively well for the rest of his life, and he accepts, though he suffers inexplicable fear and anxiety at the prospect of losing her. The Captain, however, cheats Tom on the deal. Tom vows to get Lady back whatever the cost. Now, the Captain had hired Tom to help hide a murdered man in the sewers. This man, Mr. England, had carried papers that Tom takes and hides, the paranoia and suspicion natural to his life telling him he needed some insurance in case the Captain tried to "shop him to the peelers" (the police).

Here is where the lives of William and Tom collide when, in the course of defending him, William's lawyer encounters Tom and learns of the potentially damning evidence. To go further would spoil the novel even more than I may have already done, so anyone at all interested in the story should pick up the book.

As with Monsters, Clark's tale plots the development of a person's humanity. In the case of William, a person who's lost his and must find a way to regain it or go mad. In the case of Tom, a person who knows there's a void in his life but doesn't know what it is or how to fill it.

I really, really like Clare Clark and look forward to her next novel. While I won't begrudge her the right to stay within London's city limits, it would be interesting to see if she can widen her horizons and write as compellingly in a different setting.

[Jamie Collins · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped after the end of the first chapter, where a man, who seems to be suffering from what we'd now call PTSD, wades deep into the vividly described filth of the London sewer system in order to cut himself. It was not a good introduction - I'd have preferred to know something else about the character first. I don't have the stomach for this. I think I'll find some non-fiction about the Great Stink instead.

[Julia H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a VERY difficult book to read (it literally made me sick to my stomach) and I probably wouldn't have finished it if a friend hadn't enthusiastically recommended it to me.

It takes place in London, and most of the story takes place in Victorian sewers where engineers are trying to figure out how to flush out the sewage into the Thames to control disease and of course, the smell.

What makes the story so difficult to read is that the main character is a war veteran who is still haunted/traumatized by the atrocities he saw and experienced during the Crimean War. The author conveys his pain very well, and it's enough to know that he tries to escape his pain by working in the sewers -- I won't spoil the story by going into any more detail -- but he's accused of murder and the story is in part about trying to uncover who and why someone would murder the man found down in the sewer near him, and in part about the efforts to modernize the sewers.

[Buffy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't get very far in this book before I stopped reading. When I first started it, I thought that it was going to be really good because of the author's manner of description. As the first chapter wore on, however, I found it to be overly descriptive. I want action. I want things to happen, not a 3 page description of crap (literally) in the Thames and how you could walk across it.

Don't get me wrong. I think that it's important for authors to be able to set the scene, but I want to read more than just the scene. I want to know about the characters than just the area and history in which the story takes place. I read far more about poo in those pages than I ever really needed to read.

[Madeleine McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read, but with a warning, this book takes place mainly in the sewers under London, so the atmosphere makes you feel dirty. It's that well written. Good characters and subjects that could take place today.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it took me a while to get into this, but once I had I couldn't put it down. Clare Clark's description makes it all so real, a bit too much so at times perhaps. I was happy with the ending too, especially Tom and Lady.

[Celia Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt as though I was walking through London in the 1850s while reading this book. The author manages to create a complete world that her readers can visit and feel as though they've been transported through time.

[mentalexotica · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the rotting and inadequate sewers, human excrement mixed with refuse from the slaughterhouses and knacker's yards and waste from the tanneries and factories. Every day it drained into the Thames. it was not long before the river itself became the great cesspool of the city. At low tide the effluvium clung to the pillars of bridges or piled itself into stinking mudbanks and fermented. London, the largest metropolis in the world, was poisoning itself. That was the consensus reached by doctors and scientists as the century passed its midpoint. As the filth pooled and putrefied in local sewers many of which were hardly more than open ditches it exhaled highly poisonous gases."

First, setting. Next, opinion.

It is rare - not impossible - but rare to discover after reading just the one book that you may have found another favourite author to add to your coterie. That happened with Clare Clark, author of The Great Stink, as well as other novels in the historical genre that I have yet to get my hands on and sink my teeth into.

Let me begin with a warning: this is not a book for someone with a weak stomach. Expect to come across gruesome, vile, downright revolting, in-depth descriptions of Victorian London’s notorious underground sewer which was responsible for its reputation as the filthiest city in the world in the mid 1800s. An aside: The great stink of London was so all-pervasive that even distinguished medical professionals attributed the frequent outbreaks of cholera and dysentery to the miasma which they believed was caused by the noxious fumes emanating from the river Thames. This is pre Jospeh Lister times and the link between sanitation and infection was hitherto unknown.

Back to the book though - this was one of those books people are so fond of calling, “unputdownable”. Admittedly, it begins slowly and the buildup of characters is gradual. However, I encourage you to persevere because there is a method to the madness. Clark has a deft and steady hand in the fine outlining of plot, character definition, and narrative deconstruction. This is a squalid but intriguing read resplendent with a terrific atmospheric setting and painstaking detailing - be it the myriad ways she describes the infamous labyrinth of the sewer, to a careful consideration of what can be understood today as possibly post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or even getting under the skin of the characters - be it the toshers (scavengers), or the educated literates.

This novel isn’t lazy. It’s wonderfully well-researched and a little brave too, I think, for it does not shy away from exposing the rotting underbellies of both places and people alike. This isn’t a tumble of pigs in shit (pun inevitable) or a glorious romp through gratuitous squalor - it is very real. And this is why it returns to me again and again - the maturity. The stayed hand. The awareness of walking a tightrope that allows the reader a glimpse into a time and place quite unimaginable, yet not unthinkable.

A consummate and distinguished storyteller, Clare Clark has the words. She has the best words. But what she also possesses is the experience, maturity, and patience to deliver a story so rich in texture, and acutely sensitised to the era in which it is set. Here is an example of her lyricism when describing the festering, putrid river: “(a) breeze had got up. It played down the length of the river so that the water was chased into little overlapping waves. As the moon slid out from behind a shawl of cloud, casting a pale silver light on the water, they glistened and squirmed. A gigantic black sea monster, Rose thought, that was the Thames, slithering through the city’s ditch towards its lair beneath the open sea. A grotesque beast that devoured and half-digested the waste of the largest city in the world, its open maw ceaselessly swallowing its rotten vegetation, its excrement, its dead. Its appetite was voracious, indiscriminate; its tentacles stretching even into the city’s bowels to lick at their squalid deposits.”

Well. This is some good shit.

[Ross Cumming · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally meant to read this book on its publication way back in 2005 but can't remember what stopped me and when I saw it in a recent book shop sale I didn't hesitate to snap it up.
Its a wonderful book which tells the tale of two main characters, both whose work draws them to the sewers of Victorian London and whose paths eventually cross. William May is a Crimean War veteran, who was wounded and is now working as a surveyor working on the renovation of the London sewerage system. In modern terms, he is suffering from what we would now term as, post traumatic stress syndrome, brought on by the horrors he had to endure during the war. Long Arm Tom on the other hand is what was then known as a 'Tosher' and he trawls the sewers illegitimately in search of rats which he captures and sells for illegal dog fights. Both men find a kind of sanctuary down in the sewers, far below the streets of London and on one fateful night their lives are drawn together following the discovery of a body.
The novel is reminiscent of a latter day Dickens novel and is full of wonderful characters both good and bad but the thing that stands out for me most was the descriptive prose that Clark uses to describe the sights, sounds and most of all the smells that must have pervaded London, both above and below ground during these times. There was times when, I swear, I could literally smell what she was describing just from the words on the page. She paints a picture of Victorian London as being a truly horrible, filthy, disease filled city, bursting at the seems with all kinds of humanity. The story itself is also rather good and I didn't see the main story 'twist' coming when it did and it fair races towards the climax in the latter half of the book.
A thoroughly enjoyable read of the type of novel I wouldn't necessarily read on a regular basis.

[Sonnenrabe33 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dieses Buch ist schmutzig und legt mehrere Finger in die Wunden der Protagonisten in einem London, dass überhaupt keinen Raum für solche Schwächen hat.
Das Buch hat seine Ecken und Kanten, die ich beim Lesen wirklich wertzuschätzen gelernt habe. & Es hat mich total überraschen können. Nicht etwa mit irgend welchen erzwungenen Wendungen, sondern mit einer Entwicklung der Figuren und dessen Beziehungen zu sich selbst. Es entwickelt sich außerdem eine Tier-Mensch Beziehung, die mich emotional in das Buch gezogen hat und sich wirklich zu einem kleinen 'scene stealer' entpuppte. Nicht weil diese Beziehung romantisiert wird sondern sich, wie die Figuren auch, langsam entwickelt.
Ein unangenehmes- aber wirklich tolles Buch irgendwie. Man könnte sagen: Dieses Buch hat Charakter!

5 Sterne, da es vor allem retrospektiv hohes Ansehen bei mir hat.

[Madly Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this book. When I purchased it I actually bought the wrong book! I had not planned to read fiction on how dirty London was in the mid 1850s. However the author has made the sewers and nasty waterways of London a character. You can literally smell the stench of the sewers and of the Thames River. It was awful. Going to reread for research notes.

[Nancy Rosenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it ! Suspenseful and was so descriptive of the British sewer system, I could smell it the whole time I was reading the book.

[Peter Müller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like some other reviewers have mentioned before this book starts out great but it becomes too descriptive for its own good. More and more descriptions of the smells of the sewers, the different colours and textures of bricks over the course of a whole book become tiresome. The occasional reminder, strewn throughout the book, of what living in London at the time was like would have sufficed. Concentrating on it, rather than fleshing out the protagonists as well as the antagonists more, becomes boring after a while.

Realism: People wading through excrement with cuts on their body should suffer infections to add some reality to it, especially in the mid nineteenhundreds, where medical attention was scarce and not as effective compare to today.

The style of writing switches from one character to another in mid-paragraph. One moment you would follow the thoughts of a character for 1,5 pages and in the very next sentence you are in the head of someone else walking along a corridor. I personally felt that to be quite confusing at times. The paragraphs are also often pages long, which makes the reading experience quite exhausting.

I liked the twist and the struggle the main protagonist is going through but his story arc starts low and keeps descending to the bottom until the very end, which made for very depressive reading. He is going from bad to worse and even the ending leaves him lower than the point where he started off from. His mental issues are not really resolved in the end but the author instead simply has the protagonist decide to not engange in a negative habit again, whereas before he was unable to control it. Why wasn´t he able to control it before, when he had much more support? The reader is not given a reason that could not have been given equally so in the beginning of the book. It is simply a choice he suddenly makes. This happens on the very few last pages of the book and feels rushed.

The same applies to the finishing arc of the antagonist. I felt cheated by the outcome as it comes very abrupt and the reader does not get a last glimpse of what is going on in the mind of the antagonist after exposure. He gets caught, the end.

The side protagonist comes out even but I also felt no empathy towards him at the end of the book as he comes across as selfish. His relationship with his dog is sometimes one of emotions that he displays for the dog but after closer inspection he is actually just looking after his own financial gain that comes with the ownership of the animal.

There is only one supporting character (a lawyer), who interacts with the main protagonist, that has a story arc where the reader feels the character is going through a change.

All in all it started off very promising but I felt let down by all but one of the story arcs in the end (and quite depressed).

[Russell Bittner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must confess that it cost me a couple of chapters to get into Clare Clark’s The Great Stink. Her mechanics are fine; her word-choice, excellent; but her descriptions are a bit too much in her head. Dialogue is sparse, and the narrative—perhaps her aim—is initially underground, both figuratively and literally. It could be her intention that her readers should have to grope in these first two chapters; if so, mission accomplished. But the result, at least at first, is a story one has to fight to find.

By Chapter III, the prose calms down a bit, the dialogue increases, and the story becomes much more accessible. By Chapter IV, it’s smooth sailing—except for one thing. When Ms. Clark’s narrative dwells on Joe or Tom, her voice switches back and forth between standard English and slang. If she were doing this in dialogue or as a way of showing one or the other’s private thoughts, it would be both natural and appropriate. But why in the narrative? To me at least, it makes no sense.

As just one example of many, let’s consider the opening paragraph of Chapter VIII on p.99: “(i)t all changed in the tunnels after that terrible summer, and not for the better neither (sic!)… There was (sic!) many as (sic!) had to drink that filthy stream too, there being nothing else. It never rained.” Once again, this isn’t dialogue or even interior monologue; it’s narrative. Ms. Clark could also take a lesson or two from Lynn Truss (of Eats(,) Shoots & Leaves fame), but that’s another story—and I don’t wish to pontificate upon punctuation here and now.

If you’ll allow a bit of a teaser, the anecdote concerning Tom’s dog, Lady, from pp. 106 – 111 is a veritable gem! But why, then, “the lascivious (sic!) faces of [the Captain’s] associates” (p. 127) when there’s not a woman in sight, and when all the talk is of sewers, rats, tunnels and the life underground—Tom’s “trade in tales of the tosh” (same page)? Kudos to Ms. Clark, however for “judder” (on pp. 156, 232 and p. 233). While the verb may be commonplace in Brit. Engl., it’s entirely lost to Am. Engl. I had to look it up. Ditto for “quieten” on pp. 160 and 261. “Ruck(ing),” however (on p. 289), was a verb I couldn’t find anywhere in the sense she apparently intended it.

Chapter XIII, unfortunately, is a replay of the hallucinatory narrative of Chapters I and II. But the “incident” (I’ll leave it at that so as not to give too much away) between Tom and the Captain, described with pitch-perfect dialogue between pp. 189 – 195, is nothing less than Dickensian in its valor. And yes, I use the word ‘valor’ advisedly. Where- and however Ms. Clark learned the art of characterization, she’s done well. (I believe it’s fair to say, based on this incident and others throughout the book, that Ms. Clark has a soft spot for doggies. She also has a contrastingly hardened one for a certain breed of humans.)

Can Ms. Clark convey character with a physical portrait the length of one short paragraph? You be the judge. On p. 207, we find the following description of a heretofore unannounced Donald Hood: “Hood was a pale man with greasy skin who looked as though he had been moulded (Brit. Engl. spelling) from candle wax. His nose ran like a long drip down the middle of his face and his shoulders dropped unevenly, as if, during his manufacture, a draught had caused the candle to melt more on one side than the other.”

But perhaps she outdoes even herself with this quite lyrical description of a nose pick (on p. 249): “Peake surveyed the damage without curiosity before slouching against the wall and probing the upper reaches of his nostrils with a questing forefinger.” (I suspect one has to be born and bred British to know the desultory magic of a “questing forefinger” up one’s nose.)

At the same time, the following (on p. 319) has to be one of the better puns I’ve ever read: “(i)f the Captain thought he could just walk back in there, cool as you like, as if there’d been nothing awry, he had another think (!) coming.” And “billy-doo” (Brit. slang for ‘billet-doux’) on p. 320 is equally priceless—even if “night soil” (a Brit. euphemism for human excrement) seems a bit timid so late in the story (p. 337). I mean, why shy away from Anglo-Saxon expletives at this point? And may I remind Ms. Clark that the “River Styx” (p. 338) is not on earth?

I’ll conclude this review (or at least my direct citations) with one from pp. 325 – 326, which I believe may be the most evocative description of a river I’ve ever read: “(a) breeze had got up. It played down the length of the river so that the water was chased into little overlapping waves. As the moon slid out from behind a shawl of cloud, casting a pale silver light on the water, they glistened and squirmed. A gigantic black sea monster, Rose thought, that was the Thames, slithering through the city’s ditch towards its lair beneath the open sea. A grotesque beast that devoured and half-digested the waste of the largest city in the world, its open maw ceaselessly swallowing its rotten vegetation, its excrement, its dead. Its appetite was voracious, indiscriminate; its tentacles stretching even into the city’s bowels to lick at their squalid deposits.”

All in all, Ms. Clark’s book illustrates—for me at least—why historical novels belong on the very highest shelf of literature. To get and remain there, the stories contained within their two jackets require a consummate artist. Ms. Clark is, without question, one such artist. Her peccadillos are just that: peccadillos. Her pen, meanwhile, is a paintbrush … and she, herself, paints the body of the book prosaically—sometimes poetically—with all the colors of the rainbow.


RRB
04/11/16
Brooklyn, NY

[Karina Samyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een Dickensiaans boek over de Londense ondergrond. Niet de metro maar de riolen. Tijdstip : the Great Stink, toen het in augustus 1858 zo warm werd dat de metropool onder een verstikkende stank kwam te liggen. Aanleiding om het rioleringssysteem grondig aan te pakken en te moderniseren. We volgen in het boek een getraumatiseerde soldaat die gebroken uit de Krimoorlog komt en als ingenieur in de riolen duikt. Naast goorheid, verval en moord zit ook wat liefde in het verhaal.
Clark deed echter te veel moeite. In één alinea schrijven dat het donker, duister en er geen licht was, is van het goede te veel en regelmatig las ik schuin zonder het gevoel te hebben iets te missen. Los daarvan onderhoudend.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I think of this book. It's not really the murder mystery it is advertised as or at least that I took it to be by the description. I feel there's a lot the author says about mental illness back in the day but otherwise I think maybe the book could have taken a few more passes before it was ready for publishing. I enjoyed it overall but I don't know if I need to ever return to it.

[Helen Carolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I normally enjoy Ms Clark's books but this her first was a bit disappointing. An engineer returning from the Crimean war suffers blackouts and self harms.In the tunnels beneath Victorian London a murder is committed and our traumatised soldier may be guilty. Only a rat catcher from the tunnels may be able to clear him.Not her best.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about London's 19th century poop problem, with enough olfactory imagery to make you nauseous. The novel is primarily about an engineer on the project who was plagued by PSTD from his recent stint in the Crimean War. He has a cutting habit, which he practices in the sewers. Doesn't seem like anybody could survive what would have to be the resulting infection, but this is fiction. He is implicated when a dead body is found in the muck. Can the determined young lawyer taking this on as his first case overcome the overwhelming evidence?

[silviottide]

DNF.
Abbandonato ben prima delle 100 pagine. Premesse e ambientazione interessanti, svolgimento soporifero.