Avail Yourself Laura Blundy Drafted By Julie Myerson Released As Hardbound

Unique writing style/narrative. Although Laura is a selfish chracter it is the lack of education that motivates it and compels compassion,

Another little dark, victorian tale, I liked it. Oh miserable book. It was good enough to read to the end, but in a way I wish I hadn't wasted my time, I think I'm done with Myerson, I enjoyed her nonfiction Home, but this is the second of her fiction books I've read Me and The Fat Man A LOT of years ago and I just get this feeling of gritty perversion and hard times for everyone in the name of literary wisdom.
Apparently. I don't know. She's just not my thing,

This one is set in thes in London and is about a messed up woman called Laura Blundy.
It dots about to various points in her downtrodden life: sleeping rough, losing a leg, marrying and later murdering the surgeon who lopped her leg off, giving up her baby as a teenage mother, having an affair with a manyears her junior was he supposed to be her abandonded son, or only that she believed so.
Laura seems to have some kind of pyschopath side to her personality, in that she easily murders without any sense of guilt, in fact a lot of what she does, she doesn't really bat an eyelid at.
It's all just, I don't know, . . life was hard on her so she was hard straight back, A creepy look at the underbelly ofth century London as seen through the eyes of Laura Blundy, Ms. Blundy is a fiercely independent amputee, who marries her surgeon then proceeds to murder him, Or does she This book will keep you up nights, I loved it. Julie Myerson has produced an astonishing characterisation in Laura Blundy, A convincing recreation of the filthy underbelly of Victorian London, An unsettling read, and an uncompromising, complicated narrator: a haunting, unromantic love story, Not a pleasant read but a very powerful one, This is a dark tale set amongst the poverty of Victorian England and begins with a grisly murder, The plot unfolds in a series of flashbacks and on reaching the end unfortunately I now have more questions than answers The writing evokes so well the smells, sights and descriptions of daily life in the slums and our narrator Laura Blundy cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
A great read but be warned this is not for the squeamish Laura Blundy is a Victorian woman who loses her leg in an accident and marries the surgeon who saved her life.
But she has secrets she can't reveal and then she meets Billy, a manyears her junior, The novel starts with her murdering her husband and then skips back and forth to different points in her life, It was a little strange but oddly worked, It was just the ending that had me confused, What a strange and memorable character is Laura Blundy, and what a remarkable novel!

We join our antiheroine in the febrile, stinking murk of Victorian London the sewer system not yet built, the streets awash with filth and disease.
And what an introduction it is: the first thing Laura tells us is that she has murdered her husband, Ewan, It takes several goes, But I have surprise on my side, The beginning of the second chapter is no less arresting: My name is Laura Blundy and Ewan was the man who took off my leg.
Such is the way of this book, Its propelled by Lauras voice, at once blunt and sly,

Im not dangerous, I said with as serious a face as I could manage and he laughed, but it wasnt that funny because I was lying.
I was dangerous.

Lauras story is told in nonchronological order, Each part of her life the gilded childhood from which she is abruptly cast into poverty the years spent walking the streets and scratching a living the accident in which she loses a leg her marriage to Ewan

her meetings with lover Billy is broken up into small chunks, and all of them are scattered piecemeal throughout the book.
Think of it like this: its a completed jigsaw thats been flipped onto the floor perhaps in the struggle that ensues when a woman aims a dogshaped paperweight at her husbands flamehaired head, and you have to crawl around gathering up the pieces to reassemble it.
There are tantalising glimpses of the bigger picture, but what it really depicts is not clear until its complete, And at the end you quite want to upset the table yourself and put it back together all over again,

There is an irresistibly horrible charge to much of the narrative due to a possible connection between Laura and Billy, one thats hinted at from the start.
It was partly this that kept me turning the pages, even as I feared the outcome, Does she know what we think we know Which is worse: the idea that she does, and has engineered all this deliberately, or that she doesnt, and were going to have to watch her realise The thing is, I was so caught up in wondering about that, I didnt see the real revelation coming.
When it hit, I was stunned,

Not only did the ending of Laura Blundy make me want to reread the whole book immediately, but the more I think about it, the more I love it.
Its both a brilliantly effective piece of historical fiction and an uncanny triumph of ventriloquism, Atmosphere, character, voice, plot, structure every element is strong they all work together perfectly and to powerful effect, Read if you enjoy transgressive fiction and unreliable narrators,

sitelinkTinyLetter sitelinkLinktree For all the talk of the mystery and suspense, I found this book just oppressively slow and predictable.
The writer's style of switching from one point in the story was cute but nothing more, and the sense of period was completely lost.
Okay, but nothing more. I enjoyed the story but I have no idea what the ending meant, From the author of Me and the Fat Man and Home comes a gripping historical novel set in Victorian London, This is a tale of murder and love and the tragic extremes of loss and need,
On a humid, thundery afternoon, Laura commits an appalling act the murder of her husband, But is it so appalling to free yourself, to run after the only passion youve ever known It is Billy who has to find an answer Billy, fifteen years younger than her and already a father of five.
But what he doesnt know yet is that Laura also had a child, a child she gave up to the Foundling Hospital and whose memory will shape their future together in unimaginable ways.


Julie Myersons new novel moves through a Victorian London which is tender, murky and unsettling, A spectacularly eerie and unforgettable love story, A dark and detailed book about a woman who marries the man who amputates her leg, The time where the book takes place ins is very well described and you can really understand in what conditions the people had to live in.

But it is difficult to tell when laura is telling the truth and when she is lying, she uses everything to her advantage and is a cleverly woman who knows how to present herself to others but she has also experienced great pain and is still suffering from these events.
The ending was surprising and not what I expected it to be but I really liked the book and all of the characters.
Loved it, slightly creepy, a little obvious but nonetheless I enjoyed it, mysterious, suspenseful and too confusing, Fairly nonsensical Victorian tale, v atmospheric and engaging, and wellwritten, but may be too gory for some, And, as other people have said, it didn't hang together very well or make any actual sense!! loved the terse style and sickness of subject.
very well written and i savoured it, Julie Myerson is the author of nine novels, including the internationally bestselling Something Might Happen, and three works of nonfiction.
As a critic and columnist, she has written for many newspapers including The Guardian, Financial Times, Harpers Bazaar, and the New York Times.
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