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Amazon.co.uk Review
Silvertown is the story of the life of author Melanie McGrath's grandmother, Jenny Page. As McGrath acknowledges, "It was the kind of life that could have belonged to a thousand women living in the mid years of the twentieth century in the East End of London. Except that it didn't. It belonged to Jenny". McGrath's achievement in the book is to make Jenny's very commonplace, circumscribed life not only believable and moving but also to turn it into a mirror in which the reader can see the changes that the century visited upon the East End. When Jenny was a young girl, the London docks were the biggest port in the world, teeming with life and industry. By the time she was an old woman, all the docks were closed and the old East End was a part of history. Not that Silvertown encourages nostalgia. The descriptions of Jenny's impoverished childhood, of the pulling of all her teeth on her 17th birthday, of the sweatshop where she worked, are enough to make readers throw away any rose-tinted glasses they might be tempted to use. Very occasionally the dialogue in the book lapses into the "Cor, blimey, strike a light, guv'nor" kind of Cockney heard in so many bad British films of the black-and-white era. Largely, both dialogue and narrative combine to provide a remarkably convincing and lively portrait of an ordinary life rescued from oblivion and of a world that's gone.--Nick Rennison
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'McGrath tells her story in a novelist's idiom, and the result is extraordinarily powerful and curiously resonant. Like much of the East End, Silvertown today is in the process of an astonishing transformation. The curse on the area has been lifted. But McGrath has beautifully recorded the old Silvertown just before it disappears for ever.' Sinclair McKay, Daily Telegraph
'This is a remarkable account of the social history of the East End. It provides a rare bridge between those two separate Londons; for while the story belongs to a mysterious past, the style and sophistication is strikingly contemporary.' Anthony Sampson, Guardian
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare gem of book to be added to your MUST READ list.,
By
This review is from: Silvertown: An East End family memoir (Hardcover)
The first thing that struck me about this book was the use of language which raises it head and shoulders above others of a similar genre.For example " Jenny was salty and wilful,as thin and prickly as the reeds that once grew where she was born. Her heart was full of tiny thorns, which chafed but were never big enough to make her bleed. "The second thing to strike me that I was being led through a door into a world and a London about which I knew absolutely nothing and had never dreamt that such a place existed. Perhaps much of this would be familiar to Londoners but as a Scot this book was a revelation, a history lesson intertwined with the story of an ordinary, yet somehow extraordinary life. If I have any criticism of the book it would simply be that it was far too short and passed too quickly from my life. I wanted to know so much more, to ask so many more questions than were answered. And yet that is the mastery of this book, it leaves you wishing there was just one more sweetie in the bag. That Jenny Page had one more sugary treat to offer. It is without doubt one the best books I have read this year.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
absorbing and moving,
By A Customer
This review is from: Silvertown: An East End family memoir (Hardcover)
This is a really impressive book. It is the story of a poor, passive young woman, born and living out her life in the East End, unhappily married, and pretty much at the mercy of big national and world events. It is the very ordinariness of the story that makes it so impressive; Jenny Page could be anybody's grandma, and her life story is absorbing. Melanie McGrath wears her research/general learning lightly. I found it impossible to put down, and wanted it to go beyond Jenny's story, to tell us more about Rosie, and, indeed, McGrath herself. Very highly recommended.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not so sure...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Silvertown: An East End family memoir (Hardcover)
Despite not being able to put this book down, it left me feeling a little unsure about its veracity. The skilfully drawn characters and sense of place held me in thrall but as the book drew on I began to feel that much of what I was reading had to be based on surmise and woven around wider research than just a family history. My gran was an East End Girl too and certainly didn't have such a recall of detail. There was also a sense of sadistic vouyeurism: gaining pleasure from reading about such a miserable life, that I felt uncomfortable about.Enjoy it as a work of 'faction' perhaps, and admire the skill of the author, but beware of taking it as gospel.
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