Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the place where dreams fail., 2 Dec 2003
This is an exceptionally well-written novel, a fictionalised account of the Thompson and Bywaters murder trial of the 1920s. Julia Almond is an intelligent young woman with a lively imagination, who yearns to break away from the dreary lower-middle-class life she has been born into. An attractive, vivacious woman, she marries a man much older than herself, solely in order to break away from her unfeeling mother. She soon finds that marriage isn't much of an improvement, her husband is stodgy and dull, but then the First World War breaks out and her husband goes away to work as a desk-bound officer.For the first time in her life Julia experiences freedom. She is a career woman, working as a buyer for a top-class boutique. She loves her new life, and then finds it stymied once more when the war ends and her husband returns home. She enters into an affair with a hopelessly romantic young man, who one night recklessly attacks Julia's husband in the street, fatally injuring him. Both he and Julia are arrested for murder, and a sensational trial ensues. It's not giving anything away to reveal that they are both found guilty and hanged, as this is the essence of the story. F Tennyson Jesse was a respected true crime writer, who covered most of the famous murder trials of her time, and she brings an emotional commitment to this story, showing that this isn't a cold-bloodied killer they are hanging, but simply a hopelessly romantic young woman whose biggest fault was her foolishness. Whatever your personal feelings about the death penalty it is hard not to be emotionally drawn into the final chapters, when Julia is awaiting her fate in the condemned cell. It is where she realises that she can no longer dream, that all that is left is cold reality. There is a poetry about the writing here, contrasting the putting-to-death of two young people, with the day-to-day life of London going on outside the prison walls. In those final pages you reall do see that life is indeed sweet.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Pin To See The Peepshow, 21 May 2007
This book is strongly based on the Edith Thompson/ Frederick Bywaters case, but written approx. 9years after they were executed. You are told the story through the eyes of the main character, Julia Starling, from her school days up until her last night in the condemned cell. This is a beautifully written book and I would highly recommend it to anyone who relishes a brilliantly told 'story'. The final chapter is so powerful and leaves the reader with a real sense of horror at what is about to take place. A wonderful book!!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Pins, peepshows and punishment, 28 April 2009
'A Pin to see the Peepshow' is the story of Julia Starling,
who sees herself as a romantic heroine - 'she had always believed
in love,' as F. Tennyson Jesse tells us. Julia is, in fact,
somebody who lives entirely in the world of her own imagination;
and what makes this book so wonderful, in my view, is that,
bit by bit, Julia is made to realise that life cannot be lived
on romance and imagination alone.
She goes through a rather perfunctory education - her form teacher,
Miss Tracey, being the first of her great loves - and then obtains
a job at L'Etrangere's, a dress shop, where Julia soon rises to a
prominent position.
But all is not well, for Julia's home life becomes the stuff of
nightmare upon her father's death. Tennyson Jesse wonderfully
shows us Julia's state of mind when she is told that she will
have to share her bedroom with her young cousin Elsa, who Julia
passionately detests. (All Julia's emotions are passionate!)
'Perhaps Elsa would fall under an omnibus and get run over -
she couldn't give up her room.'
The only escape for Julia is marriage, it seems. Tennyson Jesse
makes of Julia's husband, Herbert, a very interesting character -
kind and generous (up to a point, at least) before marriage,
but unyielding and pompous after, based of course on Percy Thompson,
just as Julia is on his wife Edith. Julia is shown as retreating,
despite herself, into her imaginary existence, but when her new love
interest, Leonard Carr, comes along, Tennyson Jesse shows us the
trouble that Julia is making for herself. Events quickly gather
pace as the love affair reaches a terrible climax - Herbert is
stabbed and then Leo and Julia stand trial for his murder,
with inevitable results.
It is at this point that Julia's predicament makes the novel
a masterpiece, rather than simply a study of a woman trapped by
society's expectations and her failed marriage. We live each day
with Julia in the condemned cell, waiting hopelessly and with
terror for her proposed execution and, even more awfully, we realise
with Julia that 'love' is no solution; thinking of Julia's
fellow prisoners, Tennyson Jesse says 'it was nothing that these women
could go out free to love - love mattered nothing to Julia.'
Anything I may write about this wonderfully moving and
tragic book can only be a pale description of the story contained
in it. And what of that emotion we call 'love'? Julia says,
after all, that 'it was none of it real.'
I wonder if we agree with her?
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