- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (28 Sep 1972)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140034935
- ISBN-13: 978-0140034936
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.7 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 336,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Backward Shadow
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Product Description
Book Description
The sequel to Lynne Reid Banks' groundbreaking novel of the 1960s, The L-Shaped Room
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Jane says she doesn't want to be a burden to anyone - least of all to her lover, Toby. She has exchanged the l-shaped room of the earlier novel for a remote country cottage where she nurses her baby. Dottie, another stray, turns up with a proposal unlikely at first sight to succeed.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jane has given birth to her son, David, and takes him to live in the country, in the house that her aunt Addy left to her.In the same way that she loves the little l shaped room, Jane grows to love the isolation of the country. Her lover Toby is still in London, trying to make a living from his writing, and she is unwilling to be a burden on him. However, with the arrival her erstwhile best friend, Dottie, she realises that she cannot cut herself off from society forever. Together they set up in business, though Jane knows that her heart is not really in it. With the news that Toby is being persued by another woman, Jane's world starts to fall apart and she must come to the decision of whether she is willing to open herself up to Toby or not.
The tone of this book is more depressing than The L Shaped Room, and some of the important themes of the first book do not seem to be dealt with adequately. For example, the main point of importance was the fact that Jane is unmarried, and that David is therefore illegitimate. In the sixties this would have been quite a serious problem in the eyes of society, in The Backward Shadow this point seems almost glossed over.
Although the book is slightly disappointing, those who enjoyed Jane's story in The L Shaped Room will enjoy finding out what happens to her.
The tone of this book is more depressing than The L Shaped Room, and some of the important themes of the first book do not seem to be dealt with adequately. For example, the main point of importance was the fact that Jane is unmarried, and that David is therefore illegitimate. In the sixties this would have been quite a serious problem in the eyes of society, in The Backward Shadow this point seems almost glossed over.
Although the book is slightly disappointing, those who enjoyed Jane's story in The L Shaped Room will enjoy finding out what happens to her.
Format:Paperback
This book is the second in the trilogy that began with "The L Shaped Room"
It continues the story of Jane the unmarried mother introduced to us in the first book. Dont expect a happy ending with easy solutions, Lynne Reid Banks writes well with gritty themes.
It continues the story of Jane the unmarried mother introduced to us in the first book. Dont expect a happy ending with easy solutions, Lynne Reid Banks writes well with gritty themes.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Backward Looms the Shadow
4 Mar 2010
Format:Hardcover
The story of Henry Barclay, an Englishman cashiered at age 39 with five thousand pounds to invest, and when he meets Dottie, a chic Londoner temporarily holed up in a country village, she inveigles Henry into investing his cash in the small made-goods shop she is hoping to start up with her girlhood friend Jane Graham. Jane, the heroine of Lynne Reid Banks' earlier novel, The L-Shaped Room, has left Fulham and the love of her life, novelist Toby Coleman, because her beloved aunt Addy has died, leaving Jane a country cottage and the four hundred pounds that literary agent Billie Lee has wangled for American publication of Addy's own novel. (We never hear the name of that book, but in a memorable scene, Jane derides Toby for calling his book Brave Coward.)
Added to the mix, Dottie has left swinging London because of her extreme moral revulsion at the pleasure-mad Vanity Fair lifestyle practiced there. One unpleasant vestige is Dottie's former boyfriend, Alan Innes, a creep who comes down to the country cottage and, finding Dottie away, attempts to rape poor Jane even with baby David asleep in his cradle in the next room.
Back to Henry. He is the son of a tyrannical father who never let him get his own way and kept him chained to selling in a junk shop his entire life. Now the father has remarried a lovely girl younger than Henry himself, the radiant Jo, a Jane Asher sort of woman, and Ted and Jo have a baby girl Amanda, so that Henry now has a little sister at age 39. The big story in the book is how Dottie decides to have her own store, Us and Them, that will sell only handmade products of the countryside: outsider art, glass blown by local craftsmen, weird metal and wood objets, trinkets and cloth. Jane initially resists, for she is far too busy with her own life of trying to care for baby David by pulling down double shifts at the local pub, where she learns to draw a beer as well as a man, and also she sells stamps at the local post office for Mrs. Stephens and her senile husband.
There's a lot of plot but I haven't told you the best part! Suffice it to say that something in Henry Barclay awakens Jane's romantic interests, and the novel devolves into a romantic triangle between Henry, Jane, and the driven Dottie.
When I was in high school I loved this novel, but I can now see it is just not as good as its predecessor, although it goes to places of sadness, tragedy and remorse the other one simply avoids. It is perhaps the tragic mask next to the comic mask that was The L-Shaped Room. The backward shadow of the title, ios a concept of Dottie's that doesn't make much sense, but basically it's about how our fears of the future paralyze us in our present life and prevent us from seeking present happiness. That's how I feel about, say, ice cream.
Added to the mix, Dottie has left swinging London because of her extreme moral revulsion at the pleasure-mad Vanity Fair lifestyle practiced there. One unpleasant vestige is Dottie's former boyfriend, Alan Innes, a creep who comes down to the country cottage and, finding Dottie away, attempts to rape poor Jane even with baby David asleep in his cradle in the next room.
Back to Henry. He is the son of a tyrannical father who never let him get his own way and kept him chained to selling in a junk shop his entire life. Now the father has remarried a lovely girl younger than Henry himself, the radiant Jo, a Jane Asher sort of woman, and Ted and Jo have a baby girl Amanda, so that Henry now has a little sister at age 39. The big story in the book is how Dottie decides to have her own store, Us and Them, that will sell only handmade products of the countryside: outsider art, glass blown by local craftsmen, weird metal and wood objets, trinkets and cloth. Jane initially resists, for she is far too busy with her own life of trying to care for baby David by pulling down double shifts at the local pub, where she learns to draw a beer as well as a man, and also she sells stamps at the local post office for Mrs. Stephens and her senile husband.
There's a lot of plot but I haven't told you the best part! Suffice it to say that something in Henry Barclay awakens Jane's romantic interests, and the novel devolves into a romantic triangle between Henry, Jane, and the driven Dottie.
When I was in high school I loved this novel, but I can now see it is just not as good as its predecessor, although it goes to places of sadness, tragedy and remorse the other one simply avoids. It is perhaps the tragic mask next to the comic mask that was The L-Shaped Room. The backward shadow of the title, ios a concept of Dottie's that doesn't make much sense, but basically it's about how our fears of the future paralyze us in our present life and prevent us from seeking present happiness. That's how I feel about, say, ice cream.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
A wonderful, amazing, powerful book.
13 Jan 1999
Format:Hardcover
This book is out of print, but do your best to find it anyway, it is worth the search. If you liked the L-Shaped room you will love this. It is well written, interspersing humour with passages of great feeling and emotion. Simply wonderful.
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