The L-Shaped Room

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I have been searching for this title for a couple of years now!!! (Could not remember the name of the author, and for a while there I thought the room was actually circular, ha ha!) remembered again to ask what I'd come for. As I wasn't very clear about it myself, it was naturally difficult to think what to tell her; but I managed to falter something unconvincing about It is very, very rare that I care about a will-they-won’t-they couple in a book. Reading about romance tends to bore me rather, and I’m much more interested in reading about a couple who’ve been married for thirty years than by young suitors. But Toby and Jane might be that couple. Even though I can’t actually remember whether or not they end up together – either at the end of the book or at the end of the trilogy. Despite all those re-readings, and my love of them, that detail has disappeared. But Toby is great. He comes along, rattling away about his writing and his life, and Jane wants nothing to do with anyone. But you know from the first moment that he’ll wear her down, and they’ll become friends and comrades if nothing else. As her friend Dottie says, “First of all I thought he was just some Lynne Reid Banks is a British author of books for children and adults. She has written forty books, including the best-selling children's novel The Indian in the Cupboard, which has sold over 10 million copies and been made into a film. You can still furnish your bedsit and feed yourself from North End Road market, on any day of the week. Established in 1887, some stallholders are the descendants of the original costermongers – but the newsagent would be horrified at the multitude of different nationalities that have joined them since: Egyptian, Moroccan, Turkish, Filipino and Caribbean, to name but a few. Doris blazed a trail – the residents of this part of Fulham are now truly multicultural.

Frank’s café, on the corner of Westbourne Park Road and Powis Terrace, is now The Mutz Nutz, a dressing-up outlet for dogs. Nothing could illustrate just how much the area has changed than the arrival of this, and its sister Dog Deli and Spa, on Powis Gardens. Toby would have a lot to get angry about if he was still around – not least the fact he could no longer afford to slum it in Ladbroke Grove. Now that you are aware of the problems with the room, the next step is to find some solutions! But first it’s worth considering the function of your room. Her self-awareness and the way she analyses her feelings and those of people around make the novel transcend its period – although she dislikes Toby’s “useless fund of self-knowledge”. At times she wants to punish herself, and telling her father was like a bullfight, “I didn’t want to see the bull killed; I just wanted to know what it would do to me to see it.” There is warmth and humour too, including meeting someone “who wasn’t even the sort of person you could enjoy being rude to.” Jane feels an overwhelming sense of shame when she understands the full extent of the public’s opinion of her: “I was right in the middle of a moment of truth, and it was still and quiet and empty in there, as it is supposed to be in the heart of a tornado.” However, the novel is certainly not all bleak as she also experiences wonderful moments of sympathy and kindness from strangers, a friend and another family member. Nor are doctors all bad once she manages to find a sensible one. It’s encouraging to read a story about someone who can survive and thrive despite the social stigma which has been attached to her – much in the same way as Joyce Carol Oates portrayed in her novel “We Were the Mulvaneys.” Where Reid Banks’ novel really excels is the complex way she shows how Jane can overcome her own self-loathing about her situation and transform it into a source of strength. I'm looking forward to going to the reading group and considering the parallels and differences between Jean Rhys' writing and Reid Banks'.Lynne Reid Banks, born in 1929, and part of the post-war wave of newly “liberated” women entering the professional workplace in droves, initially pursued a career as a stage actress, then as a television journalist, and, following a demotion, as a television scriptwriter. She took revenge by writing the first draft of this novel “on a company typewriter, on a company paper, on company time.” In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote "[Leslie Caron] pours into this role so much powerful feeling, so much heart and understanding, that she imbues a basically threadbare little story with tremendous compassion and charm.The credit, however, is not all Miss Caron's. She must share it with an excellent cast, including Tom Bell, a new actor who plays the writer on a par with her. Particularly she must share it with the remarkable young director Bryan Forbes, who also wrote the screenplay from a novel by Lynne Reid Banks. Mr Forbes is a sometime actor whose first directorial job was last year's beautiful and sensitive Whistle Down the Wind. In this little picture, he has achieved much the same human quality, with shadings of spiritual devotion, as in that." [6] Awards [ edit ] book, in the film she has the excuse that she has to collect a suitcase) where there is a new occupier (played by a hard-faced Nanette Newman in the film):

Caron's performance earned her the Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for best actress, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. [8] [9] [10] Oh, I've met them,' she said. 'You can't help it. That John. He looks after me like he was my mother or Over a comforting cup of coffee, Jane reflects on her predicament, and a life that has similarities with the author’s own. Born in London in 1929, Lynne Reid Banks was evacuated to Canada during the Second World War, returning as a teenager in 1945 to train and then work as an actress. Jane’s recollections of pre-Equity survival in rep, living off tinned spaghetti in dreary northern towns, ring with the authenticity of autobiography. she used to say God thought it up as a joke, and when he found people taking it serious instead of laughing, he was so put out he made it a sin.'the house by her father due to the aforementioned pregnancy, who has to find lodgings and ends up in the l-shaped room. The book opens with this scene:

I felt that there was a certain truth to Jane. She was a contrary little snob filled to the brim with a toxic mix of self-pity, racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. But I didn't think other aspects worked very well. Aunt Addy arriving on Christmas morning was a bit silly; why hadn't Jane previously mentioned her caring and unconventional spinster aunt as a potential source of support? This book exudes the feel of the early sixties, and is surprisingly honest about taboo subjects at the time - single mothers, prostitution, abortion, racism, and homosexuality. Jane is in her late twenties and pregnant after an unhappy consummation of a previous romance during her acting career. She finds herself in the L-Shaped Room because it is cheap and dirty, far from everyone she knows and hopes to meet no-one, save some money and escape from the world. Instead, the inhabitants of the house find their way to her room, and often into her heart over the course of the pregnancy. During this time she struggles to come to terms with who she is and what she wants and also with what she wants from the relationship with her father, who demanded she leave home after she informs him of her condition. Throughout the book, Jane's life twists and turns, never seeming to take the path you expect, but it is a wonderful journey of self-discovery. The medical aspects of the pregnancy are as remote forty years on as the social alienation she experiences - there is never a question of her not smoking or drinking during the pregnancy, nor any medical advice to stop. Modern mothers will shake their heads in disbelief but that's how it was. The reality was also that the L-Shaped Room was probably one of the few places she could have gone to without being asked to leave as soon as her pregnancy showed. The other Jane in the house is a friendly prostitute who occupies the basement. The room of Jane’s self-enforced confinement has been created from one much larger by the simple expediency of a partition wall. Crammed inside are a gas stove; a wash-basin doubling up as a sink; a table scarred with cigarette burns; a camp bed covered in a wartime afghan (a multi-coloured knitted blanket); a three-legged chest of drawers, a lumpy armchair and a mantelpiece adorned with two plaster Alsatians, under which resides a tiny gas fire. The Alsatians fill Jane with horror; the afghan affords her solace.Each book is rated in its own context, NOT in comparison to the entire range of literature, which would, of course, be an impossible task. This is a very human, character driven story. Lynne Reid Banks does characters so very well. Each and every one is a three-dimensional human being, with a life story, with a rounded character, with strengths and weaknesses … The film was restored and issued on DVD and blu-ray in 2017; extras include later interviews with Caron and Reid Banks. But I can’t get rid of this copy. Maybe one day I’ll have to buy another, if this one gets too fragile to hold, but I love it too much to throw or give it away. Not because of the design or feel, but because it has been with me for so long, and was one of the first adult novels I loved.

Jane went home to her father, a reserved man who had raised her alone, at the appointed time and she found a good job in hotel management. She made a success of it. Establish the walkways through the room. Where are the doors? Are there doors to the garden, the hallway, the kitchen? Think about the pathways through the room. You will want to walk easily around the room, creating a natural flow, rather than falling over furniture or bashing your shin on a coffee table! This is, after all, just one woman’s story. Others, in the same situation at the same time, must have encountered far more difficulties. It's hard to imagine (thankfully) a 27-year old woman being thrown out of her parental home for getting pregnant and being called a "tart".Banks was born in London, the only child of James and Muriel Reid Banks. She was evacuated to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada during World War II but returned after the war was over. She attended St Teresa's School in Surrey. Prior to becoming a writer Banks was an actress, and also worked as a television journalist in Britain, one of the first women to do so. Her first novel, The L-Shaped Room, was published in 1960. This book explores love, in all of it's various forms, and I enjoyed that. Jane meets people from all walks of life, and realises that she needs these individuals, just as much as they need her, and they help her grow in confidence. As the reader, this was joyous to read about. Taking pity on Jane’s obviously reduced circumstances he finally finds a little heart, directing her to his friend Frank’s caféfor a decent cuppa. ‘Pity they don’t divide cafés off into salon and public, if you ask me. People like to be with their own sort. Not as how you’d find many of your sort around here…’