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Identify About Books The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1)

Title	:	The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1)
Author	:	Lynne Reid Banks
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 269 pages
Published	:	(first published January 1st 1960)
Categories	:	Fiction. Classics. Novels. Literature. 20th Century

The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1) Paperback | Pages: 269 pages

Interpretation In Favor Of Books The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1)

It’s such a drag being an unwilling member of the PC Police, scanning fiction from the 1950s for standard racism and homophobia and grilling authors about their gender politics, so that when you choose to read a novel published in 1960 about a 27 year old woman having an illegitimate baby you feel you want to lay all the righteousness to one side and jump into this different pre-swinging time, just as you would a Jane Austin crinolinefest. But this author doesn’t make it easy to do that because she shoves the racism right in your face with her various Jewish characters and her big friendly loveable black jazz guitarist.

Lynne Reid Banks did a 50-year anniversary-of-the-L-Shaped-Room radio programme for the BBC and said that when she reread it for that programme the racism shocked her. “The prejudices existed and they came out in this book and I find them shame-making” she said.

Here’s an example - sorry, but we need to see exactly what we’re talking about. So here’s young Toby explaining to Jane who’s just moved into the grotty Fulham top floor flat that she needn’t be alarmed by her black neighbor John :

You mustn’t mind old John. He’s just naturally inquisitive. Like a chimp, you know, he can’t help it. He could no more resist having a look at you than a monkey could resist picking up anything new and giving it the once-over.

And now Jews. James is Jane’s boss and jumps to a conclusion about the father of the baby here:

How the hell did it happen? Why didn’t you phone me? How dare that little bastard do a thing like this? That slimy, devious little kike, I’d like to break his scrawny Yiddish neck! Don’t get me wrong, Jane, I’ve nothing against the Jews, I like them.

These casual or not so casual racist insults pop up so frequently that it’s like Lynne Reid Banks had some kind of Tourette’s Syndrome – she didn’t have to make her characters Jewish or black, and it almost seems that she did in order to get in passages like this one:

“Say coloureds don’t smell different from us. That one did. Smelt like a polecat.”
“Oh come now, father,” I said, not able to help laughing. “Polecats smell vile. John doesn’t smell like one at all.”

Well, I think there’s something more awkward and unnerving happening here than just the expression of racism. The characters, and I would suggest, the author, are all in various ways trying or being made to realise and perhaps change their ugly attitudes. Just as the whole book is working out a way that a single woman could have a baby and not be socially ostracized, or that a woman having a baby need not automatically grab the nearest guy to be a substitute husband and father. So the whole novel is this desperately uncomfortable fifties-about-to-become-the-sixties time when changes are only just beginning to happen. This means you get Jane veering between sod these men, I am on my own now and that’s okay by me and :

You darling blackbird! I thought, yearning for him, my treacherous female arms longing to imprison him forever.

The L-Shaped Room is a total time capsule, and fits right alongside A Taste of Honey, A Kind of Loving, Alfie and Georgy Girl (all of which are festooned with illegitimate offspring). Two final points : LRB says the movie with Leslie Caron is a travesty, and she also said that the book is totally not autobiographical, leading her mother to ask her if she shouldn’t publish it under a pseudonym as most people would assume it was. (I assumed it was!)

Point Books Supposing The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1)

Original Title:	The L-Shaped Room
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Jane Graham #1

Rating About Books The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1)

Ratings: 3.96 From 2633 Users | 166 Reviews

Crit About Books The L-Shaped Room (Jane Graham #1)

Its such a drag being an unwilling member of the PC Police, scanning fiction from the 1950s for standard racism and homophobia and grilling authors about their gender politics, so that when you choose to read a novel published in 1960 about a 27 year old woman having an illegitimate baby you feel you want to lay all the righteousness to one side and jump into this different pre-swinging time, just as you would a Jane Austin crinolinefest. But this author doesnt make it easy to do that because

This isn't the edition I have. I would add my copy to the goodreads database except it was published in 1975 and has a horrible reeks-of-70s, are-these-even-the-right-characters cover. Every time I look at it I giggle and grimace simultaneously. Also in my edition, on the last page there's a lone ad to buy The Joy of Sex for only $5.95. Woot! I wonder if I sent in the voucher now if I could still get it for such a groovy price.Anyhow. The L-Shaped Room. In my opinion, not nearly as good as

In 1950s London, Jane Graham, pregnant after a one-night stand she regrets, is thrown out by her father, takes a room for thirty bob a week on the top floor of a squalid house in Fulham and starts to meet her fellow housemates. I read this and liked it in 1993, and was not disappointed this time around. Its an engaging, readable book that had me living and breathing the 1950s, and isnt overly sentimental, which it could have been. Its the latest in the book groups post WWII literary

In 1950s London, Jane Graham, pregnant after a one-night stand she regrets, is thrown out by her father, takes a room for thirty bob a week on the top floor of a squalid house in Fulham and starts to meet her fellow housemates. I read this and liked it in 1993, and was not disappointed this time around. Its an engaging, readable book that had me living and breathing the 1950s, and isnt overly sentimental, which it could have been. Its the latest in the book groups post WWII literary

Stars Lynne SeymourCategory:Dramaafter 5 episodes I have firmly decided that the subject does not appeal.

I raced through this book. It's easy to read and the heroinestubborn, smart, capableis easy to like. The casual slurs she drops about blacks, Jews, and homosexuals are nasty, but they accurately reflect ordinary thinking in the late '50s; that fact doesn't make them more acceptable, but it does put them into a context. Of course, the viciously casual rejection of such people as being outside social norms and thus undeserving of respect resembles the attitude directed at pregnant single women

Jane's struggle to cope is a journey of self discovery and independence..... a wistful and haunting period piece.You can almost feel the squalor of the stark dingy L shaped room where Jane goes when her father threw her out after he discovered she was pregnant.Set in 1950's London where life was very different and unmarried mother's were frowned upon!Jane ends up in a bed sit in a house in Fulham.Beset by bed bugs, dirt and morning sickness.Her neighbours bring comfort to her, John the black