Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION CLA | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
It is 1855, and engineer William May has returned home to his beloved wife from the battlefields of the Crimea. He secures a job transforming London's sewer system and begins to lay his ghosts to rest. Above ground, his work is increasingly compromised by corruption, and cholera epidemics threaten the city. But it is only when the peace of the tunnels is shattered by murder that William loses his tenuous hold on sanity. Implicated in the crime, plagued by visions and nightmares, even he isnot sure of his innocence. Long Arm Tom, who scavenges for valuables in the subterranean world of the sewers and cares for nothing and no one but his dog, Lady, is William's only hope of salvation. Will he bring the truth to light?
With extraordinarily vivid characters and unflinching prose that recall Year of Wonders and The Dress Lodger, The Great Stink marks the debut of an outstandingly talented writer in the tradition of the best historical novelists.
Author Notes
CLARE CLARK is the author of four novels, including The Great Stink, which was long-listed for the Orange Prize and named a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and Savage Lands , also long-listed for the Orange Prize. Her work has been translated into five languages. She lives in London.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dickens fans should devour British author Clark's debut novel, a gripping and richly atmospheric glimpse into the literal underworld of Victorian England-the labyrinthine London sewer system. When the "great stink" of the title-the product of an oppressive heat wave combined with putrid sewage overflow-threatens to shut down the British capital in 1855, the politicians agree to fund massive repairs. That immense public works project is a natural magnet for the corrupt, and engineer William May, a psychologically scarred Crimean War veteran, soon finds his ethics challenged. When he courageously decides not to rubber-stamp the use of inferior brick, he puts his life, his sanity and his family at risk. May's vague recollection of a murder he may have witnessed in the depths of the sewer system results in his becoming the prime suspect and being incarcerated in an asylum. That the mystery's eventual resolution depends a bit too much on a deus ex machina in no way detracts from Clark's considerable achievement in bringing her chosen slice of Victoriana to life. She shows every evidence of being a gifted and sensitive writer in the same league as such historical novelists as Charles Palliser. Agent, Clare Alexander (U.K.). (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Despite its unappealing title, this promising debut novel from newcomer Clark should whet the appetites of historical fiction fans who like a crackling good mystery thrown into the mix. When engineer William May, an emotionally fragile Crimean War veteran, descends into the noxious sewers of mid-Victorian London to assess the feasibility of the massive sewer repairs prompted by the cholera epidemic of 1855, he experiences a measure of psychological relief after he begins cutting himself in the putrid privacy of the dangerously crumbling sewage tunnels. As his tenuous mental equilibrium begins to slip, he is framed for a brutal underground murder and eventually begins to doubt his own innocence. With both his life and his sanity on the line, he must rely on self--proclaimed sewer-rat Long-Arm Tom to unravel an intricate web of deceit and corruption to clear his good name. Clark's meticulous research provides a firm foundation for this fascinating fictional foray into one of the most monumental construction and engineering projects of the fledgling industrial age. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Excrement happens in this impressively researched first novel, which earned its London author an Orange Fiction Prize nomination. It's a faux-Victorian melodrama, akin to such recent successes as Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White and Sarah Waters's Fingersmith. Clark sets her darkly confrontational story in mid-1850s London, where William May, a severely traumatized Crimean War veteran, begins work as a surveyor for master engineer Joseph Bazalgette, who has been charged with renovating and sanitizing the city's notoriously malodorous and pestiferous sewers. Relying heavily on period historical sources (notably, Henry Mayhew's classic sociological study London Labour and the London Poor), Clark creates a graphically detailed vision of this hell just beneath earth. It's a limbo in which the increasingly unsettled May slashes and mutilates himself, and where the novel's most interesting character, "tosher" Long Arm Tom, patrols the fetid depths accompanied by his beloved dog Lady, scavenging for lost valuables and catching rats to be used as prey in the dogfights that are staged in London's grubbiest watering holes. As long as Long Arm Tom is present, the novel entices and persuades with horrific naturalistic force. Its central plot--involving a murder in which May is a suspect, the malevolent machinations of his antagonist Mr. Hawke, the prison ship (itself a floating sewer) on which May is incarcerated and the young lawyer who arrives late in the story, and rights all wrongs--is, alas, another story: a peculiarly clichéd and uninteresting one. Clark's plot would indeed be her novel's undoing were it not for the genuine skill with which she rubs our noses in its ghastly ambiance, and for the wonderful Long Arm Tom, who might have enjoyed quaffing ale and swapping horror stories with Dickens's immortal Bill Sykes. Significantly flawed, but very much worth reading. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Clarke's debut brings together two men in the dankly atmospheric tunnels of Victorian London. Recently returned from the Crimean front and suffering what would now be known as posttraumatic stress disorder, William May is newly employed as a surveyor on Joseph Bazalgette's great underground sewer project. Long Arm Tom, on the other hand, is a rougher sort who makes his living as a scavenger and rat catcher. As William grows increasingly manic, he neglects his home and family, finding his only comfort in work and the opportunity it provides him to descend into the tunnels and relieve a burning desire to cut his skin. One trip down leads him to witness a murder, which he eventually links to a profiteering scheme in awarding sewer contracts. Framed for the killing, he winds up first in a mental asylum and, later, in prison. His only hope of acquittal is an inexperienced lawyer and Long Arm Tom. If librarians can persuade readers to ignore the malodorous title and the even more unfortunate subject heading (sewerage-fiction), they may strongly recommend this confidently written page-turner.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Kingston, Ont. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Where the channel snaked to the right it was no longer possible to stand upright, despite the abrupt drop in the gradient. The crown of Williams hat grazed the slimed roof as he stooped, holding his lantern before him, and the stink of excrement pressed into his nostrils. His hand was unsteady and the light shuddered and jumped in the darkness. Rising and rushing through the narrower gully, the stream pressed the greased leather of his high boots hard against the flesh of his calves, the surge of the water muffling the clatter of hooves and iron-edged wheels above him. Of course he was deeper now. Between him and the granite-block road was at least twenty feet of heavy London clay. The weight of it deepened the darkness. Beneath his feet the rotten bricks were treacherous, soft as crumbled cheese, and with each step the thick layer of black sludge sucked at the soles of his boots. Although his skin bristled with urgency, William forced himself to walk slowly and deliberately the way the flushers had shown him, pressing his heel down hard into the uncertain ground before unrolling his weight forward on to the ball of his foot, scanning the surface of the water for rising bubbles. The sludge hid pockets of gas, slop gas the flushers called it, the faintest whiff of which they claimed could cause a man to drop unconscious, sudden as if hed been shot. From the little he knew of the toxic effects of sulphuretted hydrogen, William had every reason to believe them. The pale light of his lantern sheered off the black crust of the water and threw a villains shadow up the curved wall. Otherwise there was no relief from the absolute darkness, 1 525H_text 29/10/04 9:52 am Page 1 not even in the first part of the tunnel where open gratings led directly up into the street. All day the fog had crouched low over London, a chocolate-coloured murk that reeked of sulphur and defied the certainty of dawn. In vain the gaslamps pressed their circles of light into its upholstered interior. Carriages loomed out of the darkness, the stifled skitters and whinnies of horses blurring with the warning shouts of coachmen. Pedestrians, their faces obscured by hats and collars, slipped into proximity and as quickly out again. On the river the hulking outlines of the penny steamers resembled a charcoal scrawl over which a child had carelessly drawn a sleeve. Now, at nearly six oclock in the evening, the muddy brown of afternoon had been smothered into night. William was careful to close the shutter of his lantern off beneath the open gratings, as furtive as a sewer-hunter. It was bad enough that he was alone, without a look-out at ground level, in direct contravention of the Boards directives. It would be even harder to explain his presence here, in a section of the channel recently declared unsafe and closed off until extensive repair work could be undertaken. William could hardly protest to be innocent of the decision. He had written the report requiring it himself, his first Excerpted from The Great Stink: A Novel of Corruption and Murder Beneath the Streets of Victorian London by Clare Clark All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
