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Teigan Wheeler teiganwheeler — This is my first time reading an original ( well, translated but...) Icelandic myth, and though I want to say I love it...it is honestly very dry so far. I want to like Gunnlaug, but I can't help be reminded of High School Musical by his constant bursting out in song when faced with difficulties. Don't blame me. My little cousin made me watch it with her. Anyway. There are also a lot of names. I like Tolkien, so I'm used to someone being introduced with their entire family tree, but still, it does get a bit tedious. There also isn't much of a story so far: it's just Gunnlaug, a young man who, to prove his worth as an adult and be allowed to mary his love Helga, travels around, sings songs for everyone and occasionally fights people. Thorstein's vision does point into a dramatic love-story direction, but there isn't much of a love story so far. I mean, Helga is introduced by name only. We know she is "fair" and that's that. I hope her personality becomes at least more than a name only later on, but I don't really expect it to. Still, this is an interesting read at least, if not the most enjoyable.

Li Lang li_lang — I never leave the house without a red ribbon. Mary Saunders, the focus of Slammerkin, is thrown out of her house after being raped for her desire for a red ribbon. Does the red ribbon establish a kinship between Mary and me? Perhaps. Lacking a common desire or situation, the reader may have difficulty opening herself to a character – in my case, the relationship between a middle-aged librarian and a doomed teenaged prostitute. Slammerkin places a very young woman in a desperately poor household, where she is neither loved nor consulted about how her life will unfold. All evidence points to a miserable and colorless continuation of her mother’s life of poverty, drudgery, and subjugation that was sealed when her father was killed in a misguided protest by men who believed that they were going to lose, literally lose, eleven days of their lives when the government changed to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 -that they would lose time. I was fascinated by the subjective inconstancy of Mary’s perception of time. In her mother’s house, time is nearly a solid mass, changing only by suffering and the family’s heartless response to Mary’s pregnancy. This response, a product of the times, is doled out without mercy. How could the family understand the depth of Mary’s need to escape the faded beige of their lives, or the magical hope symbolized by that red ribbon? And yet, how could a mother cast out her raped, pregnant daughter? (As I write, I realize that Mary’s mother is the only truly unforgivable character in the book. Perhaps my modern-time sensibility intrudes. All of the subsequent damage and tragedy that defined Mary’s brief time, and all of the bitter focus on the actual material that she craved in this world, began with this primal betrayal. If she was not loved for what was within, she could, at least, adorn herself with the transitory beauty of clothes.) Time, and the times, were different when Mary fled to London. London was fast-paced, and the woman who accepted her into the sisterhood of prostitutes were fast. Doll’s love and practical guidance showed Mary that society can tolerate – even require – actions and beliefs far larger than she had ever imagined. Through prostitution, Mary acquired financial independence and freedom to see some of thewonders of her modern world. Likethe fireworks over London, she and her sisters of the night were brief flashes of beauty, dressed in their colorful slammerkins (loose dresses) and masked behind their paint. Mary’s sudden need to escape a street thug impelled her to Magdalene Hospital, a residence founded to purge the evil from the street-wise women. Time was suspended there, with silence, blandness, and time to think without fearing starvation or death in the freezing streets. With Doll’s death, Mary realizes that she has to leave London, and her retreat ends in a desperate flight from the sanctuary to the town where her mother had grown up. Glimpses of the possibilities there almost melt her cynicism, but her nature has been formed, and she can not escape. This novel is based, loosely, on the actual life of a Mary Saunders who was executed for murder in 1764. From the beginning of the novel, when Mary is 13, to her death by hanging at age 16, Mary passes through more lifetimes than many experience in ten times the years. How many such lifetimes can a child endure? For Mary is a child, and my working-class perception of childhood makes me ache for this young girl, whose only transgression was the love of a piece of red ribbon. How does the red ribbon bind me to Mary’s life? For both the 18th -century child and the 21st century woman, the red ribbon symbolizes hope. Mary’s hope for a better life is destroyed, but the hopes of my Eastern European Jewish ancestors for the children who would be born in the new world, and would escape the Evil Eye of the old. have been realized. After reading Slammerkin, I realize anew that I am, indeed, blessed.