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Post by Calenture on Mar 23, 2008 21:45:21 GMT
Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde by Emma TennantFaber 1989 The fashionable Notting Hill area is terrorized by a serial rapist. Nightingale Crescent forms the focus for a group of profesional women and artists, who live or pass through there, usually visiting the rather exclusive boarding-house-cum-club for women run by Robina Sandel. The attractive Eliza Jekyll lives in a small but luxurious ground floor apartment, which backs onto the apartment house where the frowsy Mrs Hyde lives in her unkept fixed-rent basement flat. Given the subtitle of the book, it's hardly difficult to work out the plot. What is interesting is the final explanation which postulates the depenency on a tranquilizer, withdrawn from precription without any back-up support - an all too common situation - and its replacement by the illegitimate use of Ecstacy, which combines to metamorphosizing effect. The different lives led by the 'two women' point up society's obsession with image, and its deeperi mplications, where the lower class can become undesirables with social disorders. Publisher's Weekly wrote:
Tennant ( The Adventures of Robina by Herself ) here cleverly reworks the classic tale, giving it a contemporary setting and a decidedly feminist twist. The construction itself is unusual--more like a play, complete with a ``cast list'' and a prologue that not only describes the crime but names the murderer. This device distances the reader from the action and signals that the story is less important than its social implications. It also makes the book rather an odd read. Still, there is plenty to pique the mystery lover's interest, as we quickly figure out that the task is to discern the killer's motivation and the nature of her connection to the rest of the players. As in the original tale, Mrs. Hyde and Ms. Jekyll are alter egos of one very disconnected person, here an otherwise respectable woman driven to madness, child abuse and drug addiction by her husband's desertion and the resultant loss of a defined societal role. The story of her degeneration is poignant and thought-provoking. Yet Tennant's indictment of modern society and the impossible demands it places upon women would be more effectively presented on the stage.
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