I don't understand the affectation of ignoring speech marks. It drives me insane because it takes an age for me to find a flow and stop re-reading what shouldn't need to be re-read. It was also frustrating to be presented with what reads as a statement, only to then have to trudge through the backstory of why it's there. I really wanted to like this book.

I had to study a short story by Michele Roberts for GCSE. It was called 'Your Shoes' and was centred around a mother's response to her daughter running away from home. It was poignant and rather haunting in how it framed the mother's inadequacies and her love for her daughter. Sadly I did not feel the same about the Walworth Beauty. The two narratives grated rather as I found the 19th century strand far more compelling than present day Madeline. The story never really links up or even particularly gets going. The idea of discussing the rights of prostitutes could have been interesting if it had been done in a more creative way but like this it just felt tedious.

From the first page, I knew this was going to be one of those reads rich in historical scents and sensations, a story to lose yourself in. ‘The Walworth Beauty’ by Michèle Roberts is set in the London district of Walworth, just south of the River Thames and part of the Borough of Southwark. It tells the story of Joseph Benson in 1851 and Madeleine in 2011, 160 years apart but experiencing so many similar things.
Madeleine loses her job as a lecturer of English literature, as a result she moves to a garden flat in Apricot Place, Walworth. She is delicately attuned to the history of London, walking its streets and seeing Virginia Woolf walking ahead of her, Hilda Doolittle passing her by, and, in a basement kitchen in Lamb’s Conduit Street, a mistress instructing her new housemaid. Just how closely Madeleine is connected to the past becomes clearer in the second half of the story as she explores Walworth, researching its local history and meeting her new neighbours.
Joseph and his family live in a rented house in Lamb’s Conduit Street. He works for sociologist Henry Mayhew, researching the working conditions and social backgrounds of prostitutes in Walworth. Joshua is a contradictory character, perhaps a man of his time with contemporary attitudes and assumptions about women. Still mourning his idolised first wife Nathalie, he is outwardly respectable but has money problems. He is a spendthrift and betrays Cara his second wife [and Nathalie’s older sister] by visiting prostitutes, viewing it as a necessity so Cara will not conceive again, rather than unfaithfulness. His research takes him to a house in Apricot Place where he meets landlady Mrs Dulcimer, an exotic brown-skinned woman who Joshua mistakes for a madam but who in fact helps struggling young women to establish themselves with jobs and homes.
The theme of classification runs throughout this novel, the formal type of labelling as in Mayhew’s study and the Dewey Decimal labelling system for libraries, but also the informal way of labelling people, pre-judging, jumping to conclusions. Mayhew classifies prostitutes as criminals and it is with this view that Joseph conducts his first research. In meeting Mrs Dulcimer, however, he learns the true stories of struggle and abandonment in the lives of many of the women he labels so easily as whores. He is an unreliable judge of women’s characters, however, even those closest to him.
We see similar classifications in Madeleine’s story in modern-day Walworth. There are themes of grief, longing for what is out of reach, women’s position in society and men’s attitudes towards women and sexuality. Judgements based on class and sex. The two storylines are connected in places by hints of ghosts or presences, which I found a little unsatisfactory. This is a novel about the different parts of society, some isolated, some overlapping like a Venn diagram, and as true today as in Victorian London.
I enjoyed unpicking the connections between 1851 and 2011, handled so delicately that it would be easy to pass them by. Such as Mrs Dulcimer’s missing earring, surrendered as an identifying token at the Foundling Hospital when she handed in her baby, is seen by Madeleine in a display at the Foundling Museum. There are countless examples like this of mirrored details and parallel experiences, connecting Joseph and Mrs Dulcimer with Madeleine.
‘The Walworth Beauty’ is one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year and is worth re-reading to absorb the beautiful detail written by a novelist entwined with her story and subject.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

For reasons that I cannot pin down I struggled to get engaged with the Walworth Beauty. Odd as author, location and subject all appeal, will try again later when I am in a better frame of mind

I ADORE anything to do with Victorian London so this book was a real hit for me!

So evocative of time and place! I was totally transported by this novel and found myself thinking about it incessantly whenever I put it down. Michele Roberts is one of my favourite writers as I love the fact that in her books you know that you're going to enjoy her fantastic writing but she's not just mired in one genre or time period. I loved this novel as I felt it did a fantastic job of recreating the world at this time for women in a very insightful way that made you feel that you were 'living' it, rather than being told about it. I'll definitely be recommending it to friends who enjoy a captivating and thought-provoking summer read. I loved it.

A beautiful, thought provoking novel set in contemporary and Victorian London, exploring undiscovered lives and challenging our notion of what we know of the past. Highly recommended.

This is the story of Walworth, a district of South-East London which I’ll admit I wasn’t familiar with (turns out it’s the bit with the Elephant & Castle and Old Kent Road). The story is told through two timelines: in modern-day Walworth Madeleine moves into a small garden flat after losing her job as a lecturer and in the 1850s Joseph Benson is working for Henry Mayhew on the articles which later became London Labour and the London Poor. Benson’s job is to interview the less virtuous poor – thieves, rogues and prostitutes – and, in the course of his work, he becomes fascinated with a Mrs Dulcimer, who runs a boarding house on the street where Madeleine will live 160 years later.

This book is an insight into the lives of various underclasses in the mid-Victorian era – Benson has a weakness for strong drink and working girls, Mrs Dulcimer is a black woman in a world which treats both her sex and her race as inferior, the girls who live with her struggle to survive without turning to prostitution. In the parts of the book set in the present day some of the characters are generally better off financially but they still have struggles – young women still have to fight hard to make their way in the world, older ones find themselves neglected and the pace of modern life leaves many struggling to make sense of the world. There is an air of slight menace as the two timelines wash up against each other – each era haunts the other as if the layers of history were two decks of cards being shuffled together. It is both a contemporary and a historical novel and we find that the two have as many similarities as differences.

In 1851 family man Joseph is commissioned by Henry Mayhew to conduct research into the lives of prostitutes in South London for Mayhew’s monumental work London Labour and the London Poor. In 2011 recently divorced Madeleine hopes to start a new life in Bermondsey. Two lives that are separated by more than a century begin to intersect across time – although not very convincingly in my opinion. For it to be successful such a dual-time narrative needs to have both strands firmly interwoven but unfortunately that doesn’t happen here. That the action takes place in the same geographical area isn’t enough to make the two stories connect. Both protagonists are perhaps loosely connected by their concern for the young women they meet, in Madeleine’s case some young friends of hers, but the two concerns aren’t equal in importance or relevance. I enjoyed Joseph’s story, which seemed both interesting and convincing but I was simply bored by Madeleine and found the ghostly elements of the story neither interesting nor convincing. So a book of two halves? Indeed – but not equal halves and by the end I had pretty much lost interest in both the lead characters.

I thought this was promising at the start, and certainly beautifully written. However, the dual timeline I wasn't so sure about, and I must confess I soon began to skip over the modern day parts. I expected something more from the plot, and when I'd finished I somewhat regretted spending my time on this.

Review of an advance digital copy from the publisher.

1851 and Joseph Benson is working for Mayhew on his study of London's people. Joseph's task is to find out about the lives of the prostitutes in the Walworth area of South London. He finds the task hard as he loses focus, obsessed by his late wife and subject to lust, and he seeks help from the enigmatic Mrs Dulcimer, a landlady. 2011 and Madeleine has just been made redundant from her job, she relocates to a flat in Walworth but finds it hard to adjust. As time goes by the two characters become more intertwined.

At times this book is wonderful, the prose has a hypnotic and poetic quality that slips over the reader. At other times it is just frustrating and too enigmatic to satisfy. The story of Mayhew's work is interesting and this aspect of the story runs parallel to 'The Streets' by Anthony Quinn. The sections about Joseph are longer and there is a narrative about loss and betrayal. The parts about Madeleine are less successful and I particularly disliked the strand about Emm, the 'vicar'. Having lived in the area around Walworth Road many years ago I felt nostalgia but the book did not really grip as it should.

Thanks Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and netgalley for this ARC.

A house and a past meeting the present. wonderful, whimsical, gritty, and real

The Walworth Beauty is the story of life, spread over time but connected by space.

Michèle Roberts has so much beauty in her writing. Eloquent and elaborate, the language wraps this book in dramatic metaphors and wonderful description that really sets the world as something tangible.

The way to the two worlds’ overlap is interesting. Whilst not what was originally expected, it remained very interesting. Like reading companion pieces with hidden easter eggs. 1951 and 2011 overlap through the steps most travelled – through names on gravestones and treasures found at the bottom of a garden.

There are flaws in this novel. It took a while for any kind of interest to the characters to form. It’s also quite a slow start and the heavy description that Roberts uses in her work aids that – it becomes heavy, dense to read. It feels like you’ve been reading forever but so little has actually happened, so few pages have been turned.

I wasn't sure what to expect from THE WALWORTH BEAUTY by Michèle Roberts and was pleasantly surprised at this deep and meaningful tale of love and life moving from the past to present. In 1851 Joseph's eyes are harshly opened to the reality of life for a woman as he gathers research for Henry Mayhew, while in 2011 Madeleine throws herself back into the past as she becomes engrossed in Mayhew's findings.

Through Roberts excellent writing skills that ebb and flow at the perfect moment, the reader becomes a part of the tale effortlessly as you want to soak in everything this story has to offer. THE WALWORTH BEAUTY by Michèle Roberts is an enigmatic and often unsettling story that is about women at its heart - their wants, their needs, their desires, hopes & dreams, and their harsh realities, which transcend time and place to capture the attention of us all. A captivating and thought-provoking read.

This is a wonderfully descriptive book in two different times. Joseph in 1851 and Madeleine in 2011. Joseph is researching the life of prostitutes, so spends much of his time walking the streets, trying to get answers. Everything is described so vividly that the reader could be Joseph's shadow - smelling the aromas both pleasant and usually not so pleasant, seeing the sights, hearing the noise of the busy city of London. Then there was Madeleine in 2011 who now lives in the same area and also spends a lot of time walking the streets. She feels and senses things as she wonders around in Joseph's footsteps. This was exactly my sort of book and just wish I could have enjoyed it a bit more than I did, but it was just a little too slow for my tastes and would have liked it more had there been a little less of it!