@internrachel @julia1
I just finished “Slammerkin” (384 pages), the second book in a row I’ve read by Emma Donoghue (the first being “Room”). Her prose is terrific and her themes are dark and I’m going to need to read something more lighthearted after this. “Slammerkin” tells the story of a teenage prostitute in 18th-century England for two years of a life that amounts to little more than a series of hardships and injustices delivered at the unforgiving hands of rigid class structures and the fiercely guarded ideas about chastity and purity. The horrors suffered by the central character, Mary, make her difficult to understand and those she commits herself make her difficult to like, but she’s a complex, intriguing character who is worth following through nearly 400 pages. And perhaps it’s not too much to say that her desires, curiosity, and eagerness are universal.