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A Pin To See The Peepshow
Julia Almond believes she is special and dreams of a more exciting and glamorous life away from the drab suburbia of her upbringing. Her work in a fashionable boutique in the West End gives her the personal freedom that she craves but escape from her parental home into marriage soon leads to boredom and frustration. She begins a passionate affair with a younger man, which has deadly consequences. Based on the events of a sensational murder trial in the 1920s - the Thompson/Bywaters case - Julia becomes trapped by her sex and class in a criminal justice system in which she has no control. Julia finds herself the victim of society's expectations of lower-middle-class female behaviour and incriminated by her own words. Tennyson Jesse creates a flawed, doomed heroine in a novel of creeping unease that continues to haunt long after the last page is turned.
390 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
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About the author
F. Tennyson Jesse
79 books18 followersFull name: Fryniwyd Tennyson, an English criminologist, journalist and author (she also wrote as Wynifried Margaret Tennyson)
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June 2, 2018
4.5 stars
This is a powerful and moving representation in novel form of a true crime in the 1920s. Published in 1934 by F Tennyson Jesse (great niece of the poet Tennyson) it is well written and the characterisation is strong. I must say at this point that there are inevitably spoilers ahead, although it is a bit like warning of spoilers at the beginning of a fictionalised account of the Titanic!
The novel is based on the infamous Thompson/Bywaters murder case of the early 1920s. Edith Thompson was a married lower middle class woman having an affair with a younger man (by seven years). The younger man (Bywaters meets Thompson and her husband late one evening as they are returning from the theatre and murders Percy Thompson. Both were convicted of murder as it was felt that it was planned by both and they were hanged on the same day. A case that was notorious at the time and had a significant impact on the debate about the death penalty. It has resonated since: Sarah Waters’ novel “The Paying Guests” is based on the case as was Jill Dawson’s novel “Fred and Edie” and E M Delafield’s novel “Messalina of the Suburbs”. There have been several true crime books about the case, two TV adaptations, at least two plays, several TV documentaries, mentions in Agatha Christie’s novel Crooked House, a number of legal examinations of whether the trial and sentence were valid, a biography of Thompson, a novel by Molly Cutpurse (A Life Lived) speculating about what might have happened to Thompson had she lived, fiction based on the case has come from P D James, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Cox and last but not least James Joyce was fascinated by the case and used transcripts of the trial extensively in Finnegans Wake.
The title of this novel comes from an incident when sixteen year old Julia Almond (Thompson in the novel) is looking after a class of younger children at her school. She is shown a peepshow by nine year old Leonard (later to be her lover):
“Then she picked up the box. A round hole was cut into each end, one covered with red transparent paper, one empty. To the empty hole was applied an eye, shutting the other in obedience to eager instructions.
And at once sixteen year old, worldly wise London Julia ceased to be, and a child an enchanted child was looking into fairyland. The floor of the box was covered with cotton-wool, and a frosting of sugar sprinkled over it. Light came into the box from the red-covered window at the far end, so that a rosy glow as of sunset lay over the sparkling snow. Here and there little brightly-coloured men and women, children and animals of cardboard, conversed or walked about. A cottage, flanked by a couple of fir trees, cut from an advertisement of some pine-derivative cough cure, which Julia saw every day in the newspaper, gave an extraordinary impression of reality and of distance. This little rose-tinted snow scene was at once amazingly real and utterly unearthly. Everything was just the wrong size – a child was larger than a grown man, a duck was larger than a horse; a bird, hanging from the sky on a thread, loomed like a cloud. It was a mad world, compact of insane proportions, but lit by a strange glamour. The walls and lid of the box gave to it the sense of distance that a frame gives to a picture, sending it backwards into another space. Julia stared into the peepshow, and it was though she gazed into the depths of a complete and self-contained world, where she would go clad in snow-shoes and furs, and be able to tame savage huskies and shoot bears; a world of chill pallor, of an illimitable white sky, both only saved from a cruel rigour by the rosy all-pervading light.”
This novel is written with great humanity and intensity so the reader understands Julia Almond, despite her flaws and her fantasies. Almond is portrayed as a hopeless romantic wanting the sort of romance she found in novels. Her husband is portrayed as respectable, slow and plodding, expecting the sort of wife a lower middle class chap should expect and being surprised when he didn’t get it. The novel covers Julia’s life for over ten years and does portray how events can take on a life of their own.
The last hundred pages of the novel are horrific, portraying the investigation, trial and time leading to the execution. The actual description of Thompson’s last days and execution are truly awful and should be enough to convince anyone that the death penalty should be opposed. John Ellis, the executioner, was so haunted by Thompson’s execution that he took his own life.
The novel is well conceived and well written and the reader is taken along as events spiral out of control; an indictment of lower middle class values and mores: as one reviewer pointed out had the characters been upper class or working class events would not have happened as they did. It is also a pertinent check to remind one that the jury system is not perfect.
This is a powerful and moving representation in novel form of a true crime in the 1920s. Published in 1934 by F Tennyson Jesse (great niece of the poet Tennyson) it is well written and the characterisation is strong. I must say at this point that there are inevitably spoilers ahead, although it is a bit like warning of spoilers at the beginning of a fictionalised account of the Titanic!
The novel is based on the infamous Thompson/Bywaters murder case of the early 1920s. Edith Thompson was a married lower middle class woman having an affair with a younger man (by seven years). The younger man (Bywaters meets Thompson and her husband late one evening as they are returning from the theatre and murders Percy Thompson. Both were convicted of murder as it was felt that it was planned by both and they were hanged on the same day. A case that was notorious at the time and had a significant impact on the debate about the death penalty. It has resonated since: Sarah Waters’ novel “The Paying Guests” is based on the case as was Jill Dawson’s novel “Fred and Edie” and E M Delafield’s novel “Messalina of the Suburbs”. There have been several true crime books about the case, two TV adaptations, at least two plays, several TV documentaries, mentions in Agatha Christie’s novel Crooked House, a number of legal examinations of whether the trial and sentence were valid, a biography of Thompson, a novel by Molly Cutpurse (A Life Lived) speculating about what might have happened to Thompson had she lived, fiction based on the case has come from P D James, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Cox and last but not least James Joyce was fascinated by the case and used transcripts of the trial extensively in Finnegans Wake.
The title of this novel comes from an incident when sixteen year old Julia Almond (Thompson in the novel) is looking after a class of younger children at her school. She is shown a peepshow by nine year old Leonard (later to be her lover):
“Then she picked up the box. A round hole was cut into each end, one covered with red transparent paper, one empty. To the empty hole was applied an eye, shutting the other in obedience to eager instructions.
And at once sixteen year old, worldly wise London Julia ceased to be, and a child an enchanted child was looking into fairyland. The floor of the box was covered with cotton-wool, and a frosting of sugar sprinkled over it. Light came into the box from the red-covered window at the far end, so that a rosy glow as of sunset lay over the sparkling snow. Here and there little brightly-coloured men and women, children and animals of cardboard, conversed or walked about. A cottage, flanked by a couple of fir trees, cut from an advertisement of some pine-derivative cough cure, which Julia saw every day in the newspaper, gave an extraordinary impression of reality and of distance. This little rose-tinted snow scene was at once amazingly real and utterly unearthly. Everything was just the wrong size – a child was larger than a grown man, a duck was larger than a horse; a bird, hanging from the sky on a thread, loomed like a cloud. It was a mad world, compact of insane proportions, but lit by a strange glamour. The walls and lid of the box gave to it the sense of distance that a frame gives to a picture, sending it backwards into another space. Julia stared into the peepshow, and it was though she gazed into the depths of a complete and self-contained world, where she would go clad in snow-shoes and furs, and be able to tame savage huskies and shoot bears; a world of chill pallor, of an illimitable white sky, both only saved from a cruel rigour by the rosy all-pervading light.”
This novel is written with great humanity and intensity so the reader understands Julia Almond, despite her flaws and her fantasies. Almond is portrayed as a hopeless romantic wanting the sort of romance she found in novels. Her husband is portrayed as respectable, slow and plodding, expecting the sort of wife a lower middle class chap should expect and being surprised when he didn’t get it. The novel covers Julia’s life for over ten years and does portray how events can take on a life of their own.
The last hundred pages of the novel are horrific, portraying the investigation, trial and time leading to the execution. The actual description of Thompson’s last days and execution are truly awful and should be enough to convince anyone that the death penalty should be opposed. John Ellis, the executioner, was so haunted by Thompson’s execution that he took his own life.
The novel is well conceived and well written and the reader is taken along as events spiral out of control; an indictment of lower middle class values and mores: as one reviewer pointed out had the characters been upper class or working class events would not have happened as they did. It is also a pertinent check to remind one that the jury system is not perfect.
August 24, 2021
The beginning of A Pin to See the Peepshow’s quite deceptive. It opens in Edwardian London, not long before WW1, with scenes I’d expect to find in a classic coming-of-age story rather than the tragedy this turns into. The action’s centred on a teenage girl Julia Almond, whose personality reads like a cross between Anne Shirley’s and Amy’s from Little Women. Julia’s represented as lively, vain, and a little self-centred, she buries herself in her library books, dreaming of exotic romance and marvellous adventures: in real-life she has a hopeless crush on her teacher Miss Tracey and can’t wait to escape her shabby, anonymous suburban home. Julia’s in her last weeks of school, the next step's college to learn a trade, unlike Anne or Amy her fantasy future looks increasingly unlikely. But Julia will eventually achieve a form of fame because she’s Fryn Tennyson Jesse’s stand-in for Edith Thompson, sentenced to death in 1922 and executed not long after when she was 29 years old.
Edith Thompson’s case was notorious at the time and since then it’s captured the imagination of writers from Sarah Waters and Agatha Christie to Dorothy L. Sayers. Author and journalist Edgar Wallace present at Edith’s hanging claimed:
Never in our history has there been so terrible a miscarriage of justice, or a verdict based so little upon evidence and so much upon prejudice, as that which sent Edith Thompson to that filthy scene in Holloway Gaol. The newspapers have not told you how beastly it was... And the horror is intensified by the sure knowledge of every sane man or woman, who can look facts squarely in the face … that she died innocent of the crime of murder. … If ever in the history of this country a woman was hanged by the sheer prejudice of the uninformed public, and without the slightest modicum of evidence to justify the hanging, that woman was Edith Thompson.
Tennyson Jesse’s novel’s drawn comparisons with Madame Bovary but she was as much a criminologist as a novelist and it shows in how firmly her narrative’s grounded in everyday realities. Edith’s trial and her later sentence divided public opinion, some considered her a dangerous woman who deserved to die, others believed in her innocence. There was also something odd about the fact that her death sentence wasn’t commuted to life, standard for women in her situation at the time. It’s obvious Tennyson Jesse’s rooting for Edith here, using her creation Julia Almond to highlight the contempt and snobbery directed at Edith, everything about her from her love of popular novels to her interest in fashion somehow a source of evil - although she doesn’t pretend that Edith/Julia was a saintly creature she’s more subtle than that. What she’s interested in here is making us understand Edith, witness what happened to her and think about why. Although she deviates from aspects of the original case, Tennyson Jesse's aiming to expose and explore the events, the discrimination, and the narrow bounds of class and gender that led to Edith’s death. And from my perspective she does an impressive job. She carefully sculpts her characters, including all those minor details that can really bring them to life. At first I thought the prose style was a little busy and uneven but it quickly levelled out, catching me up in its rhythm and flow as it slowly built towards a devastating conclusion.
Edith Thompson’s case was notorious at the time and since then it’s captured the imagination of writers from Sarah Waters and Agatha Christie to Dorothy L. Sayers. Author and journalist Edgar Wallace present at Edith’s hanging claimed:
Never in our history has there been so terrible a miscarriage of justice, or a verdict based so little upon evidence and so much upon prejudice, as that which sent Edith Thompson to that filthy scene in Holloway Gaol. The newspapers have not told you how beastly it was... And the horror is intensified by the sure knowledge of every sane man or woman, who can look facts squarely in the face … that she died innocent of the crime of murder. … If ever in the history of this country a woman was hanged by the sheer prejudice of the uninformed public, and without the slightest modicum of evidence to justify the hanging, that woman was Edith Thompson.
Tennyson Jesse’s novel’s drawn comparisons with Madame Bovary but she was as much a criminologist as a novelist and it shows in how firmly her narrative’s grounded in everyday realities. Edith’s trial and her later sentence divided public opinion, some considered her a dangerous woman who deserved to die, others believed in her innocence. There was also something odd about the fact that her death sentence wasn’t commuted to life, standard for women in her situation at the time. It’s obvious Tennyson Jesse’s rooting for Edith here, using her creation Julia Almond to highlight the contempt and snobbery directed at Edith, everything about her from her love of popular novels to her interest in fashion somehow a source of evil - although she doesn’t pretend that Edith/Julia was a saintly creature she’s more subtle than that. What she’s interested in here is making us understand Edith, witness what happened to her and think about why. Although she deviates from aspects of the original case, Tennyson Jesse's aiming to expose and explore the events, the discrimination, and the narrow bounds of class and gender that led to Edith’s death. And from my perspective she does an impressive job. She carefully sculpts her characters, including all those minor details that can really bring them to life. At first I thought the prose style was a little busy and uneven but it quickly levelled out, catching me up in its rhythm and flow as it slowly built towards a devastating conclusion.
December 1, 2022
The hardcover edition of this book has 515 pages. So this is a long read. I wasn’t bothered by the length initially because I really enjoyed reading about the life of Julia Almond as she was growing up. It was extremely interesting to read about her going to high school, pursuing her fledgling career in working in a dress shop (including trips to Paris as a purchaser), and meeting a boy that she was physically attracted to (but not emotionally). I grew to like Julia even though I could see she had her flaws. And the author, I thought, really wrote well. I was thinking as I was reading this that it was 5-star material, and that I could read on and on, not caring about the lengthiness of the book. But then halfway through, the story line changed, and it became at times tedious to read. However, my enthusiasm level is high, and I plan on reading more of her oeuvre. 🙂 🙃
The edition I read from was a re-issue by the British Library Women Writers Series. Please peruse their catalog (https://shop.bl.uk/collections/britis... have read 15 of 17 of their re-issues and there has been barely a bad apple in the bunch. Kudos to them for re-introducing the public to books that went out of print by female authors that deserve to be read — because they are good-reads!
I was surprised given when this was written, 1934, the frank way that the author brought up sex in relation to Julie’s life.
I just peeked to see how many GoodReads reviews there were of this book...only 38! Please put this one on my TBR list!
Summary of the book on the back cover of the British Library Women Writers Series re-issue:
• Based on the events of a sensational murder trial in the 1920s — the Thompson/Bywaters case — this work of fiction follows the life of Julia Almond as she pursues a successful career but enters into a stifling and unfulfilling marriage. Bored, frustrated and prone to flights of fancy, she begins a passionate affair which has deadly consequences. Tennyson Jesse creates a flawed, doomed heroine in a novel of creeping unease that continues to haunt long after the last page is turned.
Note:
• The author was addicted to morphine. As a young woman, she was involved in a freak accident in which one of her hands was badly injured in an airplane propeller...she wore prosthetics to replace two fingers.
Reviews (all of the reviews below reveal to varying degrees important details about the story line and what transpires...I think if I read these reviews beforehand my enjoyment from reading this book would have bene diminished...therefore if you are thinking of reading this book, read the reviews afterwards. Be rest assured all the reviews I have come across are uniformly positive):
• An excellent review by a notable British author, Sarah Waters ... https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.stuckinabook.com/a-pin-to...
• https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2017/...
The edition I read from was a re-issue by the British Library Women Writers Series. Please peruse their catalog (https://shop.bl.uk/collections/britis... have read 15 of 17 of their re-issues and there has been barely a bad apple in the bunch. Kudos to them for re-introducing the public to books that went out of print by female authors that deserve to be read — because they are good-reads!
I was surprised given when this was written, 1934, the frank way that the author brought up sex in relation to Julie’s life.
I just peeked to see how many GoodReads reviews there were of this book...only 38! Please put this one on my TBR list!
Summary of the book on the back cover of the British Library Women Writers Series re-issue:
• Based on the events of a sensational murder trial in the 1920s — the Thompson/Bywaters case — this work of fiction follows the life of Julia Almond as she pursues a successful career but enters into a stifling and unfulfilling marriage. Bored, frustrated and prone to flights of fancy, she begins a passionate affair which has deadly consequences. Tennyson Jesse creates a flawed, doomed heroine in a novel of creeping unease that continues to haunt long after the last page is turned.
Note:
• The author was addicted to morphine. As a young woman, she was involved in a freak accident in which one of her hands was badly injured in an airplane propeller...she wore prosthetics to replace two fingers.
Reviews (all of the reviews below reveal to varying degrees important details about the story line and what transpires...I think if I read these reviews beforehand my enjoyment from reading this book would have bene diminished...therefore if you are thinking of reading this book, read the reviews afterwards. Be rest assured all the reviews I have come across are uniformly positive):
• An excellent review by a notable British author, Sarah Waters ... https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.stuckinabook.com/a-pin-to...
• https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2017/...
September 13, 2016
I was surprised that I enjoyed this book as much as I did! I thought it may be a little 'old fashioned'. Although written in 1934 and is set during the first world war and just after, it could just as easily have applied to a young woman in the present day.
I was unable to find anything that I liked about Julia. At the beginning I thought that she was just a teenager who was dissatisfied with her life and that she would grow out of it. This however was not the case, Julia is very vain, her short sightedness and refusal to wear her glasses helps her self image as 'a beauty' (she can't see herself in the mirror). We are told that she has a long neck and lovely brown hair but as for beauty, I think that was rather embellished in her own head.
Julia has a huge crush on her teacher Miss Tracey but has the need to be constantly the centre of attraction, she even pushes Miss Tracey to the limit to get attention.
As she gets older and leaves school she still looks upon her parents a rather beneath her and dull, there seems to be little love in the family home. Julia is always trying to climb the social ladder and she determines that she will use her obvious good looks and intelligence to get somewhere in the life.
Having got a good job and a little more responsibility at work, Julia longs for romance. Of course with this type of character it isn't going to be just love, it will be a 'grand passion' she will be 'adored', she wants nice things and money to spend. As her life unfolds there is an uneasy feeling that Julia will go to any lengths to get her hearts desire.
At the time of publishing readers would have been familiar with the famous Thompson/Bywaters murder case and probably recognised the similarities in the story. I had never heard of this and I was pleased that the end was a surprise.
I was unable to find anything that I liked about Julia. At the beginning I thought that she was just a teenager who was dissatisfied with her life and that she would grow out of it. This however was not the case, Julia is very vain, her short sightedness and refusal to wear her glasses helps her self image as 'a beauty' (she can't see herself in the mirror). We are told that she has a long neck and lovely brown hair but as for beauty, I think that was rather embellished in her own head.
Julia has a huge crush on her teacher Miss Tracey but has the need to be constantly the centre of attraction, she even pushes Miss Tracey to the limit to get attention.
As she gets older and leaves school she still looks upon her parents a rather beneath her and dull, there seems to be little love in the family home. Julia is always trying to climb the social ladder and she determines that she will use her obvious good looks and intelligence to get somewhere in the life.
Having got a good job and a little more responsibility at work, Julia longs for romance. Of course with this type of character it isn't going to be just love, it will be a 'grand passion' she will be 'adored', she wants nice things and money to spend. As her life unfolds there is an uneasy feeling that Julia will go to any lengths to get her hearts desire.
At the time of publishing readers would have been familiar with the famous Thompson/Bywaters murder case and probably recognised the similarities in the story. I had never heard of this and I was pleased that the end was a surprise.
June 5, 2022
"She never thought for a moment that she was just an ordinary, respectable, wage-earner. She still knew that she was something wonderful."
This is the second book I have read recently based on the Fred Bywaters and Edith Thompson case, having recently finished Messalina of the Suburbs. As I had expected, this is the better book. The author is very clearly on Edith/Julia's side here and blames womens place in society for her fate. Julia was convicted because she was an adulterous, and seen as a very bad influence on Leonard, there was very little evidence of her being aware of his intentions. Despite knowing what was going to happen, I found this a very compelling read. I do think it could have been a bit shorter though.
This is the second book I have read recently based on the Fred Bywaters and Edith Thompson case, having recently finished Messalina of the Suburbs. As I had expected, this is the better book. The author is very clearly on Edith/Julia's side here and blames womens place in society for her fate. Julia was convicted because she was an adulterous, and seen as a very bad influence on Leonard, there was very little evidence of her being aware of his intentions. Despite knowing what was going to happen, I found this a very compelling read. I do think it could have been a bit shorter though.
September 10, 2023
This is listed as one of the books in Martin Edwards' The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. However, the British Library have issued it in their Women Writers series rather than their Crime Classics series, and that makes sense, since what it actually is is an extremely long and tedious character sketch of Julia Almond - clearly the Edith Thompson half of the pair who were convicted of murdering Thompson's husband - focusing on issues of class and gender. I've been reading for two solid hours and Julia has just turned seventeen. I'm sure it'll get to the crime eventually (she was 29 at the time), but it's not interesting enough to plough through several more hundred pages to get there. There is so much extraneous detail that serves absolutely no purpose, all written in a style that is obviously meant to depict Julia's thought processes, and for some obscure reason the author has chosen to make her think like a simpleton. Recommended to speed readers and people who like to know the names and descriptions of everyone in the heroine's class at school, however irrelevant they may be to the story. But for crime enthusiasts, not so much. Abandoned at 25%.
March 2, 2021
An excellent fictional account of the Thompson-Bywaters murder case of 1923.
Written in 1934 when the case was still very much in the news, F. (Friniwyd) Tennyson Jesse compiled a fascinating, gripping stand alone novel that deserves rediscovery.
One of those unique novels to turn interesting fact into even more absorbing fiction.
"When she was sixteen, Julia dreamed of romance .... and paid a young boy a pin from her dress for a glimpse at the fairytale world within his shoebox peepshow.
"When she was grown, Julia dreamed of passions and adventures which her stodgy, possessive husband couldn't offer .... and the same boy, now a man, appeared again. With him, Julia would create a dreamworld of illicit passion and fatal abandonment .... and fall headlong, almost unknowingly, into a crime of passion which would rock England in the '20s."
I bought my copy of this novel right after seeing the superb 4-part BBC-TV production which premiered in 1973. This limited series starred Francesca Annis, Bernard Hepton and John Duttine; adapted by Elaine Morgan and directed by Raymond Menmuir. (U.S.: PBS, 1975)
Written in 1934 when the case was still very much in the news, F. (Friniwyd) Tennyson Jesse compiled a fascinating, gripping stand alone novel that deserves rediscovery.
One of those unique novels to turn interesting fact into even more absorbing fiction.
"When she was sixteen, Julia dreamed of romance .... and paid a young boy a pin from her dress for a glimpse at the fairytale world within his shoebox peepshow.
"When she was grown, Julia dreamed of passions and adventures which her stodgy, possessive husband couldn't offer .... and the same boy, now a man, appeared again. With him, Julia would create a dreamworld of illicit passion and fatal abandonment .... and fall headlong, almost unknowingly, into a crime of passion which would rock England in the '20s."
I bought my copy of this novel right after seeing the superb 4-part BBC-TV production which premiered in 1973. This limited series starred Francesca Annis, Bernard Hepton and John Duttine; adapted by Elaine Morgan and directed by Raymond Menmuir. (U.S.: PBS, 1975)
September 30, 2012
Over on the Librarything Virago group – one of my favourite places on the internet to hang out – there has been quite a bit of talk about this book over the summer. It just happened I think that several people read it at around the same time. The response to it has been particularly good with people saying it is one of their favourite Virago books. Having heard all of that I had to read it for myself to see what the fuss was about.
A Pin to see the Peepshow was first published in 1934 and follows the fortunes of Julia Almond. As the novel opens Julia is sixteen and still at school, it is 1913, she has a “rave” on one of her teachers, jealously guards the privacy of her own room at home, and adores her dog Bobby passionately. Julia however is not a very likeable character - I tried to warm to her as the novel progressed – but I disliked her more as time went on. She though an extremely realistic and believable character, she is a fully fallible human being, and fascinating too. The fact I didn’t much like the central character didn’t of course prevent me from enjoying the novel itself. Julia though is selfish, vain, thoughtless and certain of her own importance, ambitious and independent she has no time for women’s suffrage, is bored by it – her only interest is in things that directly affect her. Julia lives in a fantasy world most of the time, her head filled with dreams and stories in which she plays a central role. She is a woman who is ultimately destroyed by her own actions, but also and more importantly by her class and the times in which she lived. Julia’s fate is dark one, which the reader will struggle to forget.
When Julia’s father dies, she and her mother find they will find it difficult to make ends meet. To help the family finances Julia’s uncle and aunt and Cousin Elsa move in, Elsa has to share Julia’s precious room, and even manages to steal some of Bobby’s affection for herself – much to Julia’s distress. Julia begins work at an upmarket dressmakers, where the society women who own the shop lead a very different life, which includes the ability to divorce an unsatisfactory or dull husband with practically no scandal, something that women in Julia’s own class is unable to do. Julia makes her first forays into romance, when the war gets in the way. Family friend Herbert Starling is newly widowed and although somewhat older than Julia he offers her a way of escape from home. With Herbert away at the war she will have his large roomy flat all to herself and Bobby, and so she marries him. Julia soon finds that the war doesn’t last for ever and that Herbert when no longer an officer, is once more the rather dull man she remembered from before the war, and now she must live with him constantly. She still has her job, which she loves, and indeed is so good at it – she is soon earning more than her husband. Then Leonard Carr comes back into her life. Leonard was a boy at her school years earlier, seven years her junior, who once showed her his little peepshow box.
“Then she picked up the box. A round hole was cut into each end, one covered with red transparent paper, one empty. To the empty hole was applied an eye, shutting the other in obedience to eager instructions.
And at once sixteen year old, worldly wise London Julia ceased to be, and a child an enchanted child was looking into fairyland.”
Julia and Leonard strike up a friendship – which over time becomes a lot more. Julia has an overly romantic view of their relationship, Leonard – Leo to Julia has it seems less to loose, and begins to make suggestions that would see Julia leaving her husband. Julia finds that this option which had seemed so easy to her society employers is not something that will be so easy for her. Julia is dependent on her employers; she fears that her husband making trouble for her could be detrimental to her career. Julia becomes terrified of losing Leo; she needs to prove to him that she will do anything to keep him. The repercussions of this deeply unwise relationship are astonishingly harsh, and very sad. I won’t say any more about the plot – although as the novel is famously based upon a real life court case of 1934, the Bywaters/Thompson murder trial you may be able to hazard a guess at some of it. According to the afterword, Julia Starling is not that dissimilar in personality to Edith Thompson.
I did really enjoy this book – and maybe it is not my all-time favourite virago book – not sure what they would be anyway – but it is a brilliant read, and I can see why it has proved to be so popular. I loved the descriptions of Julia’s life at the dress shop, her buying trips to Paris making her quite a modern business woman of her day. The author presents us with the inequalities for women at this time, the class that Julia was born into means her options are not as easy as for those of a higher or lower social standing.
A Pin to see the Peepshow was first published in 1934 and follows the fortunes of Julia Almond. As the novel opens Julia is sixteen and still at school, it is 1913, she has a “rave” on one of her teachers, jealously guards the privacy of her own room at home, and adores her dog Bobby passionately. Julia however is not a very likeable character - I tried to warm to her as the novel progressed – but I disliked her more as time went on. She though an extremely realistic and believable character, she is a fully fallible human being, and fascinating too. The fact I didn’t much like the central character didn’t of course prevent me from enjoying the novel itself. Julia though is selfish, vain, thoughtless and certain of her own importance, ambitious and independent she has no time for women’s suffrage, is bored by it – her only interest is in things that directly affect her. Julia lives in a fantasy world most of the time, her head filled with dreams and stories in which she plays a central role. She is a woman who is ultimately destroyed by her own actions, but also and more importantly by her class and the times in which she lived. Julia’s fate is dark one, which the reader will struggle to forget.
When Julia’s father dies, she and her mother find they will find it difficult to make ends meet. To help the family finances Julia’s uncle and aunt and Cousin Elsa move in, Elsa has to share Julia’s precious room, and even manages to steal some of Bobby’s affection for herself – much to Julia’s distress. Julia begins work at an upmarket dressmakers, where the society women who own the shop lead a very different life, which includes the ability to divorce an unsatisfactory or dull husband with practically no scandal, something that women in Julia’s own class is unable to do. Julia makes her first forays into romance, when the war gets in the way. Family friend Herbert Starling is newly widowed and although somewhat older than Julia he offers her a way of escape from home. With Herbert away at the war she will have his large roomy flat all to herself and Bobby, and so she marries him. Julia soon finds that the war doesn’t last for ever and that Herbert when no longer an officer, is once more the rather dull man she remembered from before the war, and now she must live with him constantly. She still has her job, which she loves, and indeed is so good at it – she is soon earning more than her husband. Then Leonard Carr comes back into her life. Leonard was a boy at her school years earlier, seven years her junior, who once showed her his little peepshow box.
“Then she picked up the box. A round hole was cut into each end, one covered with red transparent paper, one empty. To the empty hole was applied an eye, shutting the other in obedience to eager instructions.
And at once sixteen year old, worldly wise London Julia ceased to be, and a child an enchanted child was looking into fairyland.”
Julia and Leonard strike up a friendship – which over time becomes a lot more. Julia has an overly romantic view of their relationship, Leonard – Leo to Julia has it seems less to loose, and begins to make suggestions that would see Julia leaving her husband. Julia finds that this option which had seemed so easy to her society employers is not something that will be so easy for her. Julia is dependent on her employers; she fears that her husband making trouble for her could be detrimental to her career. Julia becomes terrified of losing Leo; she needs to prove to him that she will do anything to keep him. The repercussions of this deeply unwise relationship are astonishingly harsh, and very sad. I won’t say any more about the plot – although as the novel is famously based upon a real life court case of 1934, the Bywaters/Thompson murder trial you may be able to hazard a guess at some of it. According to the afterword, Julia Starling is not that dissimilar in personality to Edith Thompson.
I did really enjoy this book – and maybe it is not my all-time favourite virago book – not sure what they would be anyway – but it is a brilliant read, and I can see why it has proved to be so popular. I loved the descriptions of Julia’s life at the dress shop, her buying trips to Paris making her quite a modern business woman of her day. The author presents us with the inequalities for women at this time, the class that Julia was born into means her options are not as easy as for those of a higher or lower social standing.
June 22, 2025
Me ha gustado muchísimo, tanto el estilo narrativo, como la historia que recrea Tennyson Jesse a partir de un caso real.
Ahora bien, que nadie crea que va a leer un true crime, porque entonces se llevará una decepción. Es una novela pura y dura sobre la vida de una mujer desde que es niña, algo tonta y superficial, muy fantasiosa y muy ególatra en la que en un momento dado sucede un crimen.
La construcción de personajes es brillante, especialmente Julia, su protagonista, que es mucho más compleja de lo que podría parecer y que, aunque al principio me caía francamente mal, pude entender alguna de sus acciones (que no justificarlas) y me acabó inspirando compasión.
Y el retrato de la sociedad de la época, esa Inglaterra de la década de 1910 y principios de los años 20 del siglo pasado me ha parecido magistral y mucho más meritorio de lo que podría parecer, pues si bien la novela se publicó en 1934 (es decir apenas 11 años después del sonado juicio) muchas veces esa falta de distancia y perspectiva impide tener una visión clara de lo que está sucediendo en la época y sociedad que nos toca vivir. No es el caso de esta novela, en la que la autora nos propone también algunos temas tangentes (el aborto, la sexualidad femenina, las diferentes oportunidades vitales de las mujeres en función de su condición socioeconómica, la necesidad de tener espacios propios… ) y nos transmite algunas reflexiones tremendamente interesantes y muy modernas y avanzadas para su época.
En definitiva: lo he disfrutado muchísimo (y el epílogo de Simon Thomas también).
Ya para finalizar, me parece un puntazo que Alba haya puesto en la cubierta de esta edición en español la foto de Edith Thompson, Percy Thompson y Frederick Bywaters, esto es las tres personas que han inspirado la novela (pese a que en la novela al principio aparezca el típico pliego de descargo diciendo que todos los personajes son ficticios y cualquier parecido con personas vivas es pura coincidencia… ). RECOMIENDO ENCARECIDAMENTE A LOS QUE ODIAN LOS SPOILERS QUE NO BUSQUEN NADA SOBRE ESTAS TRES PERSONAS HASTA HABER ACABADO DE LEER EL LIBRO. Avisados estáis
Ahora bien, que nadie crea que va a leer un true crime, porque entonces se llevará una decepción. Es una novela pura y dura sobre la vida de una mujer desde que es niña, algo tonta y superficial, muy fantasiosa y muy ególatra en la que en un momento dado sucede un crimen.
La construcción de personajes es brillante, especialmente Julia, su protagonista, que es mucho más compleja de lo que podría parecer y que, aunque al principio me caía francamente mal, pude entender alguna de sus acciones (que no justificarlas) y me acabó inspirando compasión.
Y el retrato de la sociedad de la época, esa Inglaterra de la década de 1910 y principios de los años 20 del siglo pasado me ha parecido magistral y mucho más meritorio de lo que podría parecer, pues si bien la novela se publicó en 1934 (es decir apenas 11 años después del sonado juicio) muchas veces esa falta de distancia y perspectiva impide tener una visión clara de lo que está sucediendo en la época y sociedad que nos toca vivir. No es el caso de esta novela, en la que la autora nos propone también algunos temas tangentes (el aborto, la sexualidad femenina, las diferentes oportunidades vitales de las mujeres en función de su condición socioeconómica, la necesidad de tener espacios propios… ) y nos transmite algunas reflexiones tremendamente interesantes y muy modernas y avanzadas para su época.
En definitiva: lo he disfrutado muchísimo (y el epílogo de Simon Thomas también).
Ya para finalizar, me parece un puntazo que Alba haya puesto en la cubierta de esta edición en español la foto de Edith Thompson, Percy Thompson y Frederick Bywaters, esto es las tres personas que han inspirado la novela (pese a que en la novela al principio aparezca el típico pliego de descargo diciendo que todos los personajes son ficticios y cualquier parecido con personas vivas es pura coincidencia… ). RECOMIENDO ENCARECIDAMENTE A LOS QUE ODIAN LOS SPOILERS QUE NO BUSQUEN NADA SOBRE ESTAS TRES PERSONAS HASTA HABER ACABADO DE LEER EL LIBRO. Avisados estáis
December 12, 2014
From an early age Julia Almond, only child of conventional and ‘respectable’ lower middle class parents, knows that she is special. Longing for romance and adventure, she dreams of the day when something wonderful will happen. She attends the Polytechnic, does well in French and fashion-drawing and becomes an apprentice in a dress shop, eventually taking on the responsibility of travelling to Paris as buyer. When Julia’s father dies, she and her mother are unable to meet their bills. Relatives come to share the house and Mrs Almond becomes little more than a skivvy. Julia had prized her own room and cannot bear sharing. The room 'was hers, something that belonged exclusively to her – the only thing save Bobby the mongrel that did.' As a means of escape, she marries a widower, a family friend, who looks good in his wartime uniform. The marriage is a disappointment but like Madame Bovary, she cannot give up her hopes and dreams. When finally she meets the great love of her life, she remains trapped by convention and the seeming impossibility of making love work.
The genius of Tennyson Jesse is to get under Julia’s skin evoking tiny details of her life with vivid intensity and conveying Julia’s imaginative life and complex mix of vanity and vulnerability. Although there is the usual disclaimer that the characters in the book are ‘entirely fictitious,’ Julia Almond and Leonard Carr are based on Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters who, in 1922, were jointly convicted of murdering Edith’s husband; this in spite of the fact that Frederick Bywaters insisted that he had acted alone. Edith Thompson had broken the society’s rules and paid the price.
Tennyson Jesse was a historian, criminologist and dramatist as well as a novelist so it is not surprising that she produced this powerfully written and emotionally charged classic.
The genius of Tennyson Jesse is to get under Julia’s skin evoking tiny details of her life with vivid intensity and conveying Julia’s imaginative life and complex mix of vanity and vulnerability. Although there is the usual disclaimer that the characters in the book are ‘entirely fictitious,’ Julia Almond and Leonard Carr are based on Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters who, in 1922, were jointly convicted of murdering Edith’s husband; this in spite of the fact that Frederick Bywaters insisted that he had acted alone. Edith Thompson had broken the society’s rules and paid the price.
Tennyson Jesse was a historian, criminologist and dramatist as well as a novelist so it is not surprising that she produced this powerfully written and emotionally charged classic.
June 18, 2022
I couldn't put this one down once I got into the novel. It took a few chapters to capture my interest, but once I was hooked, I was in it for the long haul. I found this to be such an absorbing novel all the way to the end. The themes addressed in the pages center around class, women's rights, women in the workforce, fidelity, adultery, a woman's right to her body in the marriage bed, abortion, mental health, and ultimately the way a woman was treated in the legal system in the early 1910's-1920's. I just found it all to be absolutely fascinating and Tennyson Jesse's opinions are interspersed in the story.
By around page 230 or so, I felt the anxiety setting in. The anxiety of knowing what was to come and dreaded it. Julia started out as a dislikable character but then I began to sympathize with her. By the end of the book, she read like the victim in all of this. Even though, she does play an instigator role. The afterword written by Simon Thomas is also a brilliant addition to the book in offering background information on the case, laws, and rights of women during the time period.
By around page 230 or so, I felt the anxiety setting in. The anxiety of knowing what was to come and dreaded it. Julia started out as a dislikable character but then I began to sympathize with her. By the end of the book, she read like the victim in all of this. Even though, she does play an instigator role. The afterword written by Simon Thomas is also a brilliant addition to the book in offering background information on the case, laws, and rights of women during the time period.
January 25, 2022
There’s a literary True Crime wave cresting in 2022 and it is Meta: teeming with books of all types that dissect our long obsession with the genre. Centuries before Penny Dreadfuls were condemned for corrupting Victorian youth, Executioner’s Tales were providing grim titillation. In the modern era, True Crime began using the lenses of psychology and sociology to focus on the “why” of a crime. And by replacing moralizing with “science”, it became horribly easy to see oneself as the victim or - gulp - the accused. In this 1934 novel based on an infamous 1922 murder case, crack storytelling and rich historical detail reanimate Julia Almond and the rigidly patriarchal middle-class milieu which incubated the deadly act. Her tale gains intensity as the scene shifts to the courts and those same prejudices pervert justice and compound the crime. Long out-of-print, this cult classic has just been reissued in the British Library Women Writers series and is recommended for those who can’t get enough period crime series from the BBC.
February 3, 2023
The story opens when Julia Almond is fifteen, and at a small girls' school, where she learns French, drawing, and some English literature. She lives in a small lower-middle class area of London, with two ineffectual, but upwardly aspiring, parents. Her main love is her dog, Bobby. She dreams of romance, great adventure, and glamour, and secures a job in a high-class fashion shop, where she quickly makes herself indispensable. But after her father's death, Julia and her mother are forced to live with her uncle's family, and she rushes into an ill-advised marriage with an older man, Herbert. Distressed and bored, Julia begins an affair which ends in disaster.
This intelligent and carefully constructed novel is a study of Julia's social class, and how the rigid society around her becomes her ultimate undoing. F. Tennyson Jesse was from a wealthy and illustrious background, and at times her study of Julia's world can feel patronising or detached, but she remains sympathetic to Julia throughout, and the reader can feel her ire towards the hypocrisies facing women. It's also a tightly woven and very gripping narrative, although the final quarter can become a little too maudlin.
This intelligent and carefully constructed novel is a study of Julia's social class, and how the rigid society around her becomes her ultimate undoing. F. Tennyson Jesse was from a wealthy and illustrious background, and at times her study of Julia's world can feel patronising or detached, but she remains sympathetic to Julia throughout, and the reader can feel her ire towards the hypocrisies facing women. It's also a tightly woven and very gripping narrative, although the final quarter can become a little too maudlin.
March 7, 2015
This novel by F.Tennysonn Jesse ,, grand niece of Alfred Lord Ten nysonis a Virago classic and was televised by the BBC in 1972. I chose to revisit it in preparation for reading Sarah Water^s novel The Paying Guests. Both novels involve a fictional reworking of the notorious Thompson Bywaters case.. The unconventional, at times positively unlovable heroine of the novel Julia Almond finds herself caught in the mores of early 20th century England where rules for upper class women were very different from rules governing lower class women both in terms of money and morals. The device of the peep show a cardboard model made by the schoolboy Leonard Carr with whom Julia later becomes fatally enthralled gives Julia a glimpse into a different fairytale world and from then on she is forever waiting for something lovely to happen. A reader of romance novels she views herself as set apart from the common herd. This feeling is reinforced when she enters the glamourous world og high couture and is surrounded by women who are governed by much freer morals and not corseted by convention. The novel is set in a time of massive social cvhange when men are flocking to the front and women find themselves able to move more freely through the strata of society.
Julias emerging sexuality is explored frankly by Jesse in a manner uncommon for female novelists of the period. She moves from a crush on her school teacher, to a short passionate dalliance with a young soldier who dies at the front. He awakens her desire and fuels her imagination as to what a love affair is actually about. Her awakening sexuality however is brutally subdued when she marries an older friend of the family to escape the confines of her restrictive home. Paradoxically the price Julia has to pay for her escape is soul crushingly high and the stage is et for the doomed love affair that follows.
In many ways Julia could be viewed as a silly women, she has no intellectual gravitas, unlike her friend Anne who becomes a doctor . She is a creature of the body and prone to flights of fancy, entranced by looking through other peoples windows,trespassing on the lives of others. The essential short sightedness of this view is constantly reinforced by the real fact of Julias astigmatism as a result of which she rarely sees things clearly. But how dearly she pays for her afternoon in the sun.
The last part of the novel based on some of the actual transcripts of the Thompson Bywaters case is a terrifying indictment of the criminal justice system, and the way it dealt and still deals with women who dare to transcend their appointed roles.
Well worth a read, as well as a fascinating insight into social history in and around The First World War
Julias emerging sexuality is explored frankly by Jesse in a manner uncommon for female novelists of the period. She moves from a crush on her school teacher, to a short passionate dalliance with a young soldier who dies at the front. He awakens her desire and fuels her imagination as to what a love affair is actually about. Her awakening sexuality however is brutally subdued when she marries an older friend of the family to escape the confines of her restrictive home. Paradoxically the price Julia has to pay for her escape is soul crushingly high and the stage is et for the doomed love affair that follows.
In many ways Julia could be viewed as a silly women, she has no intellectual gravitas, unlike her friend Anne who becomes a doctor . She is a creature of the body and prone to flights of fancy, entranced by looking through other peoples windows,trespassing on the lives of others. The essential short sightedness of this view is constantly reinforced by the real fact of Julias astigmatism as a result of which she rarely sees things clearly. But how dearly she pays for her afternoon in the sun.
The last part of the novel based on some of the actual transcripts of the Thompson Bywaters case is a terrifying indictment of the criminal justice system, and the way it dealt and still deals with women who dare to transcend their appointed roles.
Well worth a read, as well as a fascinating insight into social history in and around The First World War
September 14, 2023
3'5✨
La Caja Mágica es un libro absolutamente sorprendente. Yo llegué a él por pura casualidad. Su título me llamó la atención, y su sinopsis me terminó de decidir.
Su autora, F. Tennyson, fue una de las primeras mujeres corresponsales de guerra durante la I Guerra Mundial. Publicada en 1934, en La Caja Mágica la autora nos narra la vida de una joven de familia con limitados recursos económicos que sueña con encontrar el amor, con la independencia económica, con ser libre. La protagonista de esta historia, Julia, rezuma prepotencia, carece de humildad, y a ratos resulta caprichosa. Disfruta de los elogios, de gustar, llegando a ser a veces manipuladora, de sentirse especial. Es soñadora, le gusta aislarse pensando en escenarios improbables y futuros poco posibles. Pero consigue desarrollarse profesionalmente en una tienda de moda de Londres, disfrutando de su trabajo. Ni siquiera su matrimonio, absolutamente frustrante y cargante para la joven, merma su espíritu libre. Ese ansia de libertad la llevará a un romance extramatrimonial que le hará sentirse viva y que terminará en un desenlace absolutamente inesperado.
La obra tiene un ritmo ágil, y, a pesar de su extensión (casi 600 páginas) mantiene el interés durante toda la historia. A su favor, sorprende lo explícita que es a la hora de hablar del deseo sexual, de las relaciones de la protagonista. También su denuncia implícita al machismo imperante en la sociedad inglesa de inicios de siglo, especialmente para las mujeres pobres. Y un final inesperado que pone la guinda a una obra que parece contemporánea y que he disfrutado de principio a fin.
La Caja Mágica es un libro absolutamente sorprendente. Yo llegué a él por pura casualidad. Su título me llamó la atención, y su sinopsis me terminó de decidir.
Su autora, F. Tennyson, fue una de las primeras mujeres corresponsales de guerra durante la I Guerra Mundial. Publicada en 1934, en La Caja Mágica la autora nos narra la vida de una joven de familia con limitados recursos económicos que sueña con encontrar el amor, con la independencia económica, con ser libre. La protagonista de esta historia, Julia, rezuma prepotencia, carece de humildad, y a ratos resulta caprichosa. Disfruta de los elogios, de gustar, llegando a ser a veces manipuladora, de sentirse especial. Es soñadora, le gusta aislarse pensando en escenarios improbables y futuros poco posibles. Pero consigue desarrollarse profesionalmente en una tienda de moda de Londres, disfrutando de su trabajo. Ni siquiera su matrimonio, absolutamente frustrante y cargante para la joven, merma su espíritu libre. Ese ansia de libertad la llevará a un romance extramatrimonial que le hará sentirse viva y que terminará en un desenlace absolutamente inesperado.
La obra tiene un ritmo ágil, y, a pesar de su extensión (casi 600 páginas) mantiene el interés durante toda la historia. A su favor, sorprende lo explícita que es a la hora de hablar del deseo sexual, de las relaciones de la protagonista. También su denuncia implícita al machismo imperante en la sociedad inglesa de inicios de siglo, especialmente para las mujeres pobres. Y un final inesperado que pone la guinda a una obra que parece contemporánea y que he disfrutado de principio a fin.
December 26, 2021
This is a fascinating and remarkable story of how imagination can be so much more compelling than the reality that it can lead someone to deadly consequences. I have to admit it was a bit lengthy and the character could at times be a bit annoying, but it was and is a charming book. It is based on an actual crime and trial that was huge at the time, though it does seem more disposed towards the girl than the victim (sorry to say I was not convinced by the biased opinion of the writer) it’s an intriguing and tragic read.
June 29, 2022
What a fascinating novel!
Not least because it contains a brilliant description of a back alley abortion the same week that the supreme court took away the federal right to a safe and legal abortion.
This is based on a real crime - a love triangle gone wrong but it's Jesse's approach that has me marveling because it's so thoughtful - as much about class, wealth, gender and sexuality and the crime itself is almost tucked in at the end. And of course, I loved reading about Julia's experience in the fashion business just after WWI. I'm going to look for more of Jesse's work.
A stunner.
Not least because it contains a brilliant description of a back alley abortion the same week that the supreme court took away the federal right to a safe and legal abortion.
This is based on a real crime - a love triangle gone wrong but it's Jesse's approach that has me marveling because it's so thoughtful - as much about class, wealth, gender and sexuality and the crime itself is almost tucked in at the end. And of course, I loved reading about Julia's experience in the fashion business just after WWI. I'm going to look for more of Jesse's work.
A stunner.
April 3, 2013
In some ways so old fashioned, in others a brilliant commentary of the times. Especially the bits about how Herbert liked his bacon cut, WW1, the clothes, the food, the family dynamics, the shop and above it all Julia Almond. This is a book I return to again and again.
Read
July 27, 2011Old fashioned feminist potboiler, and bloody good.
January 8, 2023
I bonded heavy with Julia, even though I never wanted to, I knew it was likely not going to end well. Julia Almond, of all fictional creations, has the misfortune of being patterned after Edith Thompson, of the Thompson/Bywaters murder trial. Her fate plays out accordingly, though an Afterword to the British Library Women Writers edition I disappeared into for a few soul-searing days features a few key mentions of how F. Tennyson Jesse altered an accused murderess for fiction.
I went into the novel knowing it was based on true, tragic circumstances - but I didn’t know if Thompson had, according to history, killed Bywaters, or Bywaters killed Thompson. Neither is the case, as it turns out. Thompson and Bywaters went to trial for allegedly conspiring to erase one corner of a sharp-edged love triangle.
I read a lot of old Crime novels - and the occasional reference guides to such novels, which often discuss when an author has taken a famous murder case and morphed it into a fiction. Plus, Crime & Mystery novels from the past often pretend to be real, by having fictional characters ruminate on real-life poisoners, backyard spouse burials, and how murderers faired in the face of evidence brought out in famous trials. Crippen, Crippen, Crippen - always with Crippen, Crippen getting the most mentions…and one of my favourite Mystery novels was inspired by Crippen. Thompson and Bywaters, however, might be the runners-up, when it comes to infamous real-life names being dropped, or picked up and converted to fiction (if we stick to suspects who made it to trial, and disqualify Jack the Ripper).
But all this True Crime referencing somehow does not make me go off and do even minimal homework, before or after embarking on a Crime novel fashioned from murder that actually happened. I usually just know that’s the type of novel I’m into, and a few names - probably not even a final verdict, or history’s last rumblings, maybe even reassessments, afterwards. I just read the novel.
A Pin to See the Peepshow is a wonderful Crime novel of the “psychological study” type, also featuring a brutally matter-of-fact look at married women’s rights and options in early 20th century England. Julia’s mind - her view of the society around her, her ambitions beyond her lower-middle class station, her intense desire to stay more alive and vibrant than the unimaginative population content to grind out a dull existence around her, and her calculated way of impressing and ingratiating herself with those few she will meet who can help her ascend out of drudgery even just a little bit - her mind came to fascinate me. Julia’s interactions with romantic interests, the men in her life, presented to us as she also works to jump-start a career in fashion out of a few dregs of resistant opportunity, actually made me think of Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain, which I only read last year. But, Mildred Pierce is not really a Crime novel, and over there, we don’t go to trial for murder. More and more, I braced for the inevitability of A Pin to See the Peepshow reminding me - by the end, as it had in the beginning, before Mildred Pierce echoes distracted me - of Evan Hunter’s novel, Lizzie, a Historical Crime novel based on Lizzie Borden. To bond with the lady is a painful process, because it’s all going to go so bad. And to trial.
The book is not written in the first-person; this allows Tennyson Jesse to occasionally venture inside the mind of a few key characters besides Julia. Briefly, we are privy to Leo’s thoughts, or Mr. Starling’s thoughts, with the emphasis being on how they perceive Julia. I thought this might not work, but it happens just enough, and with just enough characters, to show how the world sees Julia, as opposed to how Julia sees herself and others around her. Julia always comes across as “someone special”, an iconoclast, lit by a strange internal fire - and as much as she feels this, we learn that others know it too. Sadly, we also read a few things in a few minds that showJulia, clever and imaginative as she is, is not the only one with secret ambitions or a keen ability to dissemble for benefit.
The most violent moment changes the whole thing; I actually felt a bit Million Dollar Baby-ed. But, there had been a chain of events, bad decisions, laws and social morays shutting down earlier options, too much imagination tied to desperation…and Julia had me at “hello” so I had to be there for her until the final scene. It was wonderful, it became sad, then it blew itself out.
Probably one of the best, and most affecting, Crime & Mystery novels I’ll read this year. I’m careful to note I still don’t know who Edith Thompson really was, but I feel came to know Julia Almond about as much as I could. Now the letting go.
I went into the novel knowing it was based on true, tragic circumstances - but I didn’t know if Thompson had, according to history, killed Bywaters, or Bywaters killed Thompson. Neither is the case, as it turns out. Thompson and Bywaters went to trial for allegedly conspiring to erase one corner of a sharp-edged love triangle.
I read a lot of old Crime novels - and the occasional reference guides to such novels, which often discuss when an author has taken a famous murder case and morphed it into a fiction. Plus, Crime & Mystery novels from the past often pretend to be real, by having fictional characters ruminate on real-life poisoners, backyard spouse burials, and how murderers faired in the face of evidence brought out in famous trials. Crippen, Crippen, Crippen - always with Crippen, Crippen getting the most mentions…and one of my favourite Mystery novels was inspired by Crippen. Thompson and Bywaters, however, might be the runners-up, when it comes to infamous real-life names being dropped, or picked up and converted to fiction (if we stick to suspects who made it to trial, and disqualify Jack the Ripper).
But all this True Crime referencing somehow does not make me go off and do even minimal homework, before or after embarking on a Crime novel fashioned from murder that actually happened. I usually just know that’s the type of novel I’m into, and a few names - probably not even a final verdict, or history’s last rumblings, maybe even reassessments, afterwards. I just read the novel.
A Pin to See the Peepshow is a wonderful Crime novel of the “psychological study” type, also featuring a brutally matter-of-fact look at married women’s rights and options in early 20th century England. Julia’s mind - her view of the society around her, her ambitions beyond her lower-middle class station, her intense desire to stay more alive and vibrant than the unimaginative population content to grind out a dull existence around her, and her calculated way of impressing and ingratiating herself with those few she will meet who can help her ascend out of drudgery even just a little bit - her mind came to fascinate me. Julia’s interactions with romantic interests, the men in her life, presented to us as she also works to jump-start a career in fashion out of a few dregs of resistant opportunity, actually made me think of Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain, which I only read last year. But, Mildred Pierce is not really a Crime novel, and over there, we don’t go to trial for murder. More and more, I braced for the inevitability of A Pin to See the Peepshow reminding me - by the end, as it had in the beginning, before Mildred Pierce echoes distracted me - of Evan Hunter’s novel, Lizzie, a Historical Crime novel based on Lizzie Borden. To bond with the lady is a painful process, because it’s all going to go so bad. And to trial.
The book is not written in the first-person; this allows Tennyson Jesse to occasionally venture inside the mind of a few key characters besides Julia. Briefly, we are privy to Leo’s thoughts, or Mr. Starling’s thoughts, with the emphasis being on how they perceive Julia. I thought this might not work, but it happens just enough, and with just enough characters, to show how the world sees Julia, as opposed to how Julia sees herself and others around her. Julia always comes across as “someone special”, an iconoclast, lit by a strange internal fire - and as much as she feels this, we learn that others know it too. Sadly, we also read a few things in a few minds that showJulia, clever and imaginative as she is, is not the only one with secret ambitions or a keen ability to dissemble for benefit.
The most violent moment changes the whole thing; I actually felt a bit Million Dollar Baby-ed. But, there had been a chain of events, bad decisions, laws and social morays shutting down earlier options, too much imagination tied to desperation…and Julia had me at “hello” so I had to be there for her until the final scene. It was wonderful, it became sad, then it blew itself out.
Probably one of the best, and most affecting, Crime & Mystery novels I’ll read this year. I’m careful to note I still don’t know who Edith Thompson really was, but I feel came to know Julia Almond about as much as I could. Now the letting go.
September 26, 2023
Qué absoluta maravilla. En ningún momento he podido ver a esta “heroína Bovaryana” que detalla la contraportada, no he sentido que leía un true crime.
La autora se inspira en una historia real para luego construir su propio relato.
Julia y Bobby siempre se quedarán en mi memoria.
Me gustó muchísimo lo que de una mujer vive tres vidas: la del trabajo, la de casa y la de los sueños. Nos describe a todas las mujeres de esta época.
La autora se inspira en una historia real para luego construir su propio relato.
Julia y Bobby siempre se quedarán en mi memoria.
Me gustó muchísimo lo que de una mujer vive tres vidas: la del trabajo, la de casa y la de los sueños. Nos describe a todas las mujeres de esta época.
February 25, 2020
I had heard this book reviewed on the terrific 'Tea or Books' podcast so when I saw this lovely old Virago edition in a charity shop I was looking forward to the opportunity to pick it up.
Based on a notorious crime in the 1920's the writer allows us to become invested in the life of one of the main players through a fictionalised character Julia Almond. We meet Julia initially in a prologue setting a day in her life pre WW1 as a senior girl in a private city school who lives in a dream world, obsessed with her female teacher and her own self belief in her beauty and intelligence, who gets the bus back home to what appears a mundane home life where she feels put upon by her parents and has little knowledge of the intricacies of life and more particularly love. Julia is a great character and we follow her early life as war arrives and she finds a passion for a young conscript and the author brilliantly describes her naivety and passion emerging sexuality without any knowledge of the sexual act . As she also gains a job in a clothes shop and go outs with her actress friend we find ourselves immersed in what will happen to Julia.
I would not want to spoil this book for any potential reader but the second half of the book takes us into a much darker world and I found the writer then changing gears and creating a narrative that looks at the life of women in between the wars so whilst Julia happily has dismissed the sufferage movement earlier on the issues we visit are harrowing and as relevant today as they were 90 years ago including sexual autonomy, abortion and women's treatment in the justice system.
It is a long book and whilst at times I felt it could have lost 50 to 100 pages I quickly got into the rhythm of the writing which did sometimes feel dated but did not spoil my enjoyment.
All I will conclude with is that if you can come to this book without much prior knowledge the final chapters make for incredible reading and I put it down with a heavy heart.
Based on a notorious crime in the 1920's the writer allows us to become invested in the life of one of the main players through a fictionalised character Julia Almond. We meet Julia initially in a prologue setting a day in her life pre WW1 as a senior girl in a private city school who lives in a dream world, obsessed with her female teacher and her own self belief in her beauty and intelligence, who gets the bus back home to what appears a mundane home life where she feels put upon by her parents and has little knowledge of the intricacies of life and more particularly love. Julia is a great character and we follow her early life as war arrives and she finds a passion for a young conscript and the author brilliantly describes her naivety and passion emerging sexuality without any knowledge of the sexual act . As she also gains a job in a clothes shop and go outs with her actress friend we find ourselves immersed in what will happen to Julia.
I would not want to spoil this book for any potential reader but the second half of the book takes us into a much darker world and I found the writer then changing gears and creating a narrative that looks at the life of women in between the wars so whilst Julia happily has dismissed the sufferage movement earlier on the issues we visit are harrowing and as relevant today as they were 90 years ago including sexual autonomy, abortion and women's treatment in the justice system.
It is a long book and whilst at times I felt it could have lost 50 to 100 pages I quickly got into the rhythm of the writing which did sometimes feel dated but did not spoil my enjoyment.
All I will conclude with is that if you can come to this book without much prior knowledge the final chapters make for incredible reading and I put it down with a heavy heart.
May 11, 2015
What a novel! I was recommend this book roughly 10yrs ago while at school. I am glad I have waited so long to read it. I can fully appreciate this stunning tour de force!
Utterly moving, dramatic, humorous, enchanting journey back in time via tram/omnibus. I have lived Juila's life through these pages. My heart in my mouth right up till the climatic ending. Making all the more moving & harrowing a story having been based on the infamous case at the time. Also having read Sara Waters paying guests also based upon the case I can say hand on my heart this leaves all others in the dark. Oh such brilliant sadness that is literature, life, love and living!
Utterly moving, dramatic, humorous, enchanting journey back in time via tram/omnibus. I have lived Juila's life through these pages. My heart in my mouth right up till the climatic ending. Making all the more moving & harrowing a story having been based on the infamous case at the time. Also having read Sara Waters paying guests also based upon the case I can say hand on my heart this leaves all others in the dark. Oh such brilliant sadness that is literature, life, love and living!
November 7, 2022
This was so unexpected - if you read this, don't read the blurb or anything about it, just open to the first page.
The length of the book really gave justice to the protagonist, Julia, and allowed her to be so much more than the ending. I really don't want to give even a slither of a spoiler, so I will just say that Tennyson Jesse has created an admirable female character who is relatable in her selfishness and her downfalls, unloveable at times but respectfully fiercely independent. Julia Almond was ahead of her time in so many ways!
The length of the book really gave justice to the protagonist, Julia, and allowed her to be so much more than the ending. I really don't want to give even a slither of a spoiler, so I will just say that Tennyson Jesse has created an admirable female character who is relatable in her selfishness and her downfalls, unloveable at times but respectfully fiercely independent. Julia Almond was ahead of her time in so many ways!
February 17, 2023
With some books, it's easy to dash off a review as soon as the last page has been read. Others are harder--you have to work through your feelings and reactions. A Pin to See the Peepshow is one of those sorts of books. I put in an interlibrary loan request after reading a biography of Dorothy Sayers. The biographer, after talking about Sayers' mystery The Documents in the Case, mentioned how Jesse had taken Sayers' premise and elevated it, writing the book Sayers wished she could have written. Both books were fictionalized accounts of a real murder case.
Interestingly, Jesse's treatment of the plot completely eliminates the mystery (we watch the murder as it happens) and instead focuses on the events leading up to it, on the life and the mind of the woman at the center of the drama. In Sayers' version, we see the central players from the view of multiple unreliable narrators. In Jesse's, we're inside the head of the leading lady. It's an interesting study in how the perspective of the narrator can change our sympathies. Do we feel for the disappointed woman who has only ever been truly happy in her own imagination and forgive her fantasizing about murdering her husband, or do we hold her accountable for her selfishness, for the affair that put events into motion that would end with the death of her husband?
It's an interesting novel, but not a particularly uplifting one. There are no warm fuzzies to be had, no moments of joy or triumph, not even the satisfaction of seeing a murderer brought to justice, because we're not entirely sure that it was justice. There is an academic sort of delight, to be able to compare the two novels. But on pure enjoyment, I will confess I prefer Sayers', even if it is generally considered to be the inferior.
Interestingly, Jesse's treatment of the plot completely eliminates the mystery (we watch the murder as it happens) and instead focuses on the events leading up to it, on the life and the mind of the woman at the center of the drama. In Sayers' version, we see the central players from the view of multiple unreliable narrators. In Jesse's, we're inside the head of the leading lady. It's an interesting study in how the perspective of the narrator can change our sympathies. Do we feel for the disappointed woman who has only ever been truly happy in her own imagination and forgive her fantasizing about murdering her husband, or do we hold her accountable for her selfishness, for the affair that put events into motion that would end with the death of her husband?
It's an interesting novel, but not a particularly uplifting one. There are no warm fuzzies to be had, no moments of joy or triumph, not even the satisfaction of seeing a murderer brought to justice, because we're not entirely sure that it was justice. There is an academic sort of delight, to be able to compare the two novels. But on pure enjoyment, I will confess I prefer Sayers', even if it is generally considered to be the inferior.
September 30, 2021
Amazing book, beautifully written story of Julia and her doomed life. This was F. Tennyson Jesse's best, and most famous novel, based on the real-life story of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, who were both hanged for murdering Thompson's husband. The case was, and remains, is a cause célèbre; one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice in British legal history. The reason being that Thompson (just like her fictional alter ego Julia) did not participate in the killing of her husband. If you want to know more about the real-life case, there are several good books available, most notably Laura Thompson's 'Rex v Edith Thompson' and René Weis's 'Criminal Justice'.
Julia Starling is a fantasist and romantic who, despite a successful and well-paid job as a fashion buyer for an upmarket women's clothes shop, never quite manages to keep her feet in the real world. Trapped in a loveless marriage, the strong social conventions of the time somehow manage to pass her by, and she refuses to be the dutiful wife. As her marriage deteriorates into a series of domestic wrangles she uses her letters to Leo to flirt with grand ideas: a suicide pact, or murder, "her mind [lighting] up with the notion of a woman who would dare all for love". Leo, is away at sea, so nearly all the verbalisation of their love and hopes for the future are contained within the copious letters they exchanged. Julia's fantastical ideas and vague schemes included the possibility of her husband's death. Tragically for her, Leo keeps all her letters and when he drunkenly and impulsively decides to confront Herbert things rapidly unravel.
Drunk, he accosts Julia and Herbert on a darkened street; in the scuffle that follows, Herbert is struck, falls, and dies, and Julia is plunged into the nightmares of arrest, interrogation, incarceration, public trial.
© Koplowitz 2021
Julia Starling is a fantasist and romantic who, despite a successful and well-paid job as a fashion buyer for an upmarket women's clothes shop, never quite manages to keep her feet in the real world. Trapped in a loveless marriage, the strong social conventions of the time somehow manage to pass her by, and she refuses to be the dutiful wife. As her marriage deteriorates into a series of domestic wrangles she uses her letters to Leo to flirt with grand ideas: a suicide pact, or murder, "her mind [lighting] up with the notion of a woman who would dare all for love". Leo, is away at sea, so nearly all the verbalisation of their love and hopes for the future are contained within the copious letters they exchanged. Julia's fantastical ideas and vague schemes included the possibility of her husband's death. Tragically for her, Leo keeps all her letters and when he drunkenly and impulsively decides to confront Herbert things rapidly unravel.
Drunk, he accosts Julia and Herbert on a darkened street; in the scuffle that follows, Herbert is struck, falls, and dies, and Julia is plunged into the nightmares of arrest, interrogation, incarceration, public trial.
© Koplowitz 2021
October 18, 2022
I read that this novel interested Dorothy Sayers, and I like the idea of reading authors who influenced the authors you read. (Pretty sure I stole that from Alan Jacobs.) It's based on a sensational English murder case from the 1920's. As an historic artifact, it's pretty interesting. The story is ok, sort of meandering, and her points are on the nose. Had the protagonist (Julia) been born either richer or poorer, she would have been able to easily obtain a divorce or just lived how she wanted to. As it was, she belonged to the working middle class which had strict ideas about right and wrong without any moral foundation to base them on. Julia is both sympathetic and frustrating with her bad choices and selfishness, and a victim of her times. Aren't we all?
September 1, 2020
Having expected a moralistic tale, I was surprised to find a sometimes-heartbreaking feminist account of the limits women faced due to gender and class. Once one assents to the florid description and pacing it requires, we begin to learn about the title character created by Fryniwyd Jesse (let's give her back her name).
Julia Almond faces difficult choices. Until it is too late, she doesn't realize how struggling with them made her somewhat of a minority among her class and gender. She choses to "be seen" as an attractive young lady, instead of "seeing;" or wearing her glasses. She trades the freedom of singlehood for personal space. A career, instead of children. And the list of Julia's sins go on. She is only allowed a peep into the lives of the upper classes. At no price is she allowed entry.
The character is a flawed, sympathetic and believable imagined Edith Thompson, giving a voice not only to Edith but what must have been countless women at the time. I hope and imagine that Fryniwyd, who collaborated in art with her husband, knew respect, but she was clearly also familiar with frustration (if not her own, that of others).
PS I always like to include information about why I read the book and I'm stumped in this case. The inside cover reads: "To Lee, Happy Christmas '87" Did I inherit it from another English teacher?
Julia Almond faces difficult choices. Until it is too late, she doesn't realize how struggling with them made her somewhat of a minority among her class and gender. She choses to "be seen" as an attractive young lady, instead of "seeing;" or wearing her glasses. She trades the freedom of singlehood for personal space. A career, instead of children. And the list of Julia's sins go on. She is only allowed a peep into the lives of the upper classes. At no price is she allowed entry.
The character is a flawed, sympathetic and believable imagined Edith Thompson, giving a voice not only to Edith but what must have been countless women at the time. I hope and imagine that Fryniwyd, who collaborated in art with her husband, knew respect, but she was clearly also familiar with frustration (if not her own, that of others).
PS I always like to include information about why I read the book and I'm stumped in this case. The inside cover reads: "To Lee, Happy Christmas '87" Did I inherit it from another English teacher?
August 26, 2022
Based on real life murder trial of Edith Jessie Thompson and Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters in 1920s. It seems there was miscarriage of justice and you can empathize with the protagonist. The first 50 pages are a bit slow but it picks up after that. An older women affair with a younger man, frustrating marriage, very ahead of its time. I have the British Library Women Writer's series edition. Great book!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 7, 2022
This is more of a literary character study than a mystery or true crime book, a whydunnit that is so well written, capturing minute historical detail and sentiment. This is a DNF for me but only because I’m just not a true crime reader nor in the mood for a literary exploration of character, as much as I admire it. But I’ll keep it on my shelf cause one day I may feel the need to finish it.
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