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Mud
Book by Edwards, Nicky
192 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1986
17 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 4, 2017
A really great slice of life novel, a little reminiscent of Byatt's Possession - researchers living in poverty, harking back to the eras of their research. Our Heroine is a former Peace Woman, a dyke who went to live in an all-woman peace camp beside an American military base in England, where they practiced nonviolent demonstration techniques, lived out of tents, and changed their lives.
She has left and come to live in a flat in London, which she hates, to write a play, which she can't seem to start, about the war, which is Men's Stories and antagonises her horribly. She is pulled between her interest in the topic and her political beliefs, and she discovers an unlikely friend in Ada, the old lady who answers her ad for people who lived through WWI.
What's really charming about this book isn't the fact that Our Heroine keeps seeing a pale, insistent young man who just might be Ada's long-dead husband, haunting his old neighbourhood (although that did charm me, despite its naff-sounding tropiness), but rather the genuine way in which Our Heroine's experiences are set down. She has romances, she has doubts, she has furious moods and too much booze and not enough money. She wonders if she can truly consider someone sixty years older than her a friend, and muses on the nature of friendship; she differs fundamentally on political views with her new lover, and discusses this intelligently.
A really refreshing read in its truth, honesty, humour, and spark, and at under 200 pages, the perfect length for its style.
She has left and come to live in a flat in London, which she hates, to write a play, which she can't seem to start, about the war, which is Men's Stories and antagonises her horribly. She is pulled between her interest in the topic and her political beliefs, and she discovers an unlikely friend in Ada, the old lady who answers her ad for people who lived through WWI.
What's really charming about this book isn't the fact that Our Heroine keeps seeing a pale, insistent young man who just might be Ada's long-dead husband, haunting his old neighbourhood (although that did charm me, despite its naff-sounding tropiness), but rather the genuine way in which Our Heroine's experiences are set down. She has romances, she has doubts, she has furious moods and too much booze and not enough money. She wonders if she can truly consider someone sixty years older than her a friend, and muses on the nature of friendship; she differs fundamentally on political views with her new lover, and discusses this intelligently.
A really refreshing read in its truth, honesty, humour, and spark, and at under 200 pages, the perfect length for its style.
September 21, 2009
Jo returns to London after spending a year in a leaky tent at Greenham Common, to write a play about the First World War. She meets Ada, an eighty year-old ex-munitions worker whose husband was killed in action.
This is an enjoyable 1980s period piece that also raises interesting questions about war, peace, and the nature of friendship between different generations.
This is an enjoyable 1980s period piece that also raises interesting questions about war, peace, and the nature of friendship between different generations.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews