Description

WINNER OF THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS MEMORIAL PRIZE

‘Her art is ignited by voice, as you hear it, is unquestionable’ ALI SMITH, GUARDIAN

‘Distinctive, pared-down style’ DAVID EVANS, INDEPENDENT

‘Unflinching look at the lives of working-class women’ DAILY MAIL

Nell Dunn’s scenes of London life, as it was lived in the early Sixties in the industrial slums of Battersea, have few parallels in contemporary writing. The exuberant, uninhibited, disparate world she found in the tired old streets and under the railway arches is recaptured in these closely linked sketches; and the result is pure alchemy.

In this novel, we witness clip-joint hustles, petty thieving, candid sexual encounters, casual birth and casual death. She has a superb gift for capturing colloquial speech and the characters observed in these pages convey that caustic, ironic, and compassionate feeling for life, in which a turn of phrase frequently contains startling flashes of poetry.

Battersea, that teeming wasteland of brick south of the Thames, has found its poet in Nell Dunn and Up the Junction is her touchingly truthful and timeless testimonial to it.

Publisher Review

Her art is ignited by voice, especially by voice more usually given no societal, literary or aesthetic power or space but whose authority, as you hear it, is unquestionable -- Ali Smith * Guardian * What's striking at this distance is not so much Dunn's frank depiction of female promiscuity - which caused quite a stir at the time - but her distinctive, pared-down style -- David Evans * Independent * Unflinching look at the lives of working-class women, presented without any moralising or judgment, and caused a sensation -- Constance Craig Smith * Daily Mail * The random violence, the short-lived pleasures, the restlessness, the hopelessness, it's all caught here in a series of casual impressions which could not be more insistent * Kirkus Reviews *