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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Racy and Entertaining Read, September 10, 2009
This review is from: Grace Hammer: A Novel of the Victorian Underworld (Hardcover)
"Hammer," a novel of the Victorian underworld of London, is the debut of Sara Stockbridge, starlet-actress, model, and well-known muse of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood during the 1980s. Stockbridge, who strongly resembles the late Marilyn Monroe, has produced a fast and fun book for her first effort.
It's a lusty tale of crime, set in London's 19th century, poverty-stricken East End. "Hammer" introduces Grace Hammer, who leads a comfy and cozy life on Bell Lane with her four children, as they thieve from wealthy outlanders foolish enough to venture into the dark and dirty world she inhabits. She keeps a clean house, and has trained her clean and amiable children well: they lift only wallets and pocket watches, the bread and butter of the thieves' trade. Grace does, of course meet a seductive man, one Jack Tallis, who unfortunately likes to spread his attentions around, but, still, she can cope. Until, that is, a not very seductive man, from whom she stole an outstanding piece of jewelry 17 long years ago, comes looking for her.
We're told that Grace, unusually enough for her sex and class, can read, and that her favorite reading material is by Charles Dickens, fittingly enough, as it is a Dickensian world that Stockbridge is giving us here. (See, perhaps, Oliver Twist, by the master.) Mind you, Stockbridge is a great deal more terse and witty than Dickens ever was: I don't suppose he was going for terse and witty. In fact, Stockbridge writes quite well, with a great deal of brio, and has a distinctive voice. Although, of course, you'd have to characterize this effort as chick lit lite. In addition, as Stockbridge is telling us about Whitechapel, Limehouse, Shoreditch, some of the worst of London's dank slums, in the late Victorian era, she's able to bring in Jack the Ripper, who was occupied there at the time. A really racy and entertaining read, for wherever you happen to be, be it the cleanest and sunniest of beaches.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Average, September 20, 2009
This review is from: Grace Hammer: A Novel of the Victorian Underworld (Hardcover)
It is 1888, and Grace Hammer is a thief, living in London's Whitechapel. The area is a hotbed for squalor and criminal activity, and is populated with all kinds of unseemly characters (including a serial murder called Jack the Ripper). Grace lives here with her four children, making a decent (but not honest) living picking pockets. In the countryside, a man named Horatio Blunt sits, waiting for the perfect moment to enact his revenge on the woman who stole something valuable from him many years previously.
I loved the premise of the novel, and I enjoyed the setting. Victorian England is one of the time periods I enjoy reading about, in fiction and nonfiction, and I was looking forward to settling down with a good, creepy read. Grace is a plucky heroine, smart and resourceful, and the plot is, indeed, creepy indeed at times. But the plot also has some major holes in it. For example, if Grace knew she was wanted for theft, then why didn't she take an assumed name when she moved to London? For someone who was apparently such a great thief, she didn't cover her tracks very well. Why did Horatio Blunt wait seventeen years to get revenge on Grace? And the ending was anticlimactic, with everything neatly wrapped and tied with a bow. The writing style is a little uneven, too. The first twenty pages or so are written in the present tense, but then the rest of the book is written in past tense. It's almost as though the author changed her mind partway in.
But really, I thought that the characters were the best part of this novel. Grace is, as I've said, a plucky woman, one that the reader really roots for as she tries to beat Horatio Blunt at his own game. Some of her other characters truly gave me the creeps while reading this book. I just wish the plot lived up to the promise.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"What she was stealing: a deadly thing, a burden and a curse.", September 16, 2009
This review is from: Grace Hammer: A Novel of the Victorian Underworld (Hardcover)
Grace Hammer is a very unusual Victorian heroine, a jewel among the unpolished stones of late 19th century London, particularly in the East End, where streetwalkers rub elbows with pickpockets and reprobates of every ilk, where vice is profitable and life is cheap. Grace has made a niche for herself in this aberrant society; a thief, she has created a comfortable home for four children (by different fathers), a natural survivor ever on the lookout for opportunity. Unfortunately, Grace's past is just as checkered as her present, as, across the miles, an evil man "dreams, with pleasure, of slitting her throat". For Grace has stolen his most precious jewel from under his nose, disappearing into London, lost among the crowds of miscreants and grifters, the ugly underbelly of poverty in Queen Victoria's England.
While England is enjoying an unprecedented expansion of Empire, the colonization of India and the first fruits of the Industrial Revolution, the poorer citizens suffer the ravages of poverty and crime, the East End a hotbed of exploitation, thievery and madness. Undaunted, Grace glides through life, teaching her children the tricks of the trade, attracting the attentions of Jack Tallis, a handsome roué who falls under her spell. But Grace attracts the attention of another in a vast network of spies, each greedy for information to line his pockets, bartering as necessary. Word reaches Horatio Blunt, Grace's nemesis and master thief, who rolls out of his lair, his heart beating a steady drumbeat of revenge.
Stockbridge has already salted her Victorian novel with the fascinating details of Grace's fringe existence in the East End, but now the novel ratchets into a sense of urgency, Grace barely escaping the greedy, searching eyes of the crude man who has never forgotten her. The fate of Blunt's stolen jewel is of little significance, albeit some, while revenge dominates his every move. For all her friends, Grace has an equal number of enemies who hope to profit from the clever woman's appointment with the past. Mother and children on the run, Blunt closes in; at the same time the East End is terrified by a spate of brutal murders, anxiety fueled by newspaper accounts of the exploits of Jack the Ripper.
Stockbridge delivers a beautifully written period piece that captures a country caught in the changing gears of history, great opportunities accompanied by immeasurable human suffering as evidenced on the bleak streets of London's poorest neighborhoods. Regretfully, Grace briefly loses her heart to handsome Jack Tallis, has more at stake than the fruits of a heady romance. No shrinking violet, the lady proves her mettle and her moxie as she evades the evil that pursues her, a raft of unfortunates strewn in her wake. Luan Gaines/2009.
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