Faber & Faber

Jack the Lad and Bloody Mary: Joseph Connolly

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Synopsis:

A story of love, ordinary lives and domestic routine unsettled by a seemingly distant war come to home shores, Jack the Lad and Bloody Mary is an unforgettable depiction of life during wartime by one of our great contemporary novelists.

1939. Jack and Mary are just two of the millions of Londoners whose lives are turned upside down by the march of war and the dangers that it brings. Unmarried yet very much in love, their life together just a year before had been ordered and conventional enough: Jackie's work as a labourer brings in modest but adequate funds while Mary is quite content with her role about the house.

War with Germany changes everything. Under the influence of the slyly affable Jonathan Leakey - a go-between for the urbane, sinister and thoroughly corrupting Nigel Wisley - Jack is inveigled into underworld activities which soon earn him the local nickname 'Jack the Lad'. Jackie's friend and erstwhile pub companion Dickie Wheat finds his life similarly altered; what with doctor's being more in demand than ever before. Perhaps most changed though, is Mary; the circumstances of whose transformation make up the bloody heart and soul of this novel.

Life during wartime and the pressures brought to the domestic table have rarely been so memorably committed to the page. Generous, compassionate and vivid in its depiction of a stubborn London resisting collapse, Jack the Lad and Bloody Mary further confirms Joseph Connolly's reputation as a master storyteller.

Tags:

Categorised as:

Fiction

Sub-categories:

General Fiction

Genres & Themes:

Class; Men & Women; Villains; WWII