Inspired by a murder that took place in the Welsh Borders in , Slammerkin , my third novel and first historically inspired one , is about a prostitute obsessed with clothes.
A personal note: Slammerkin began as one of the stories for the collection I would go on to publish as The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits , but I soon realized that it would take the length of a novel to figure out why this murder happened back in The work I was doing for my PhD on eighteenth-century fiction really helped, giving the novel a fiercely revisionist take on gender, class and race. Historical fiction was not yet trendy in the late 90s, and my agent and I both feared that this dark, Darwinist story would be impossible to sell and it certainly was difficult.
The novel became an indy bestseller: to my surprise, modern American readers in particular were more than able to connect with the brooding resentments of a teenage street prostitute in eighteenth-century London. To buy Slammerkin. In Canada, in paperback:. Wherever you live, PLEASE support your local indie bookstore by buying from them either directly or through an indie-friendly hub such as bookshop. Kokkine kordela Athens: Alexandreia, Available in Chinese simple characters and Hungarian.
By all means, try it on for size. Discusses Frog Music alongside Slammerkin. Shikha Thakur and Dr Meenakshi F. A very smart essay reading this novel as queer in the broadest sense. Insightful analysis, especially of triangles in Slammerkin. Text Size. Privacy Policy.
