Donoghue, Emma - Slammerkin (spoilery)
So, by popular demand, the spoilery summary of Slammerkin!
Well, if "by popular demand," you mean "by the request of three people."
Here's my previous entry on the book.
Spoilers for Slammerkin
For the beginning hundred-or-so pages, I direct you to rachelmanija's entry:
"In less than a hundred pages, the desperately poor heroine's father dies, she is emotionally abused by her mother and stepfather, she is raped at the age of fourteen, she gets pregnant by her rapist, her parents disown her for being a slut, they throw her out and she is immediately beaten and gang raped, she gets a venereal disease from that rape, she becomes a prostitute, and since she's still pregnant, she gets her six-month fetus aborted by a hag with a sharpened stick."
After this, she hangs out with her prostitute friend Doll Higgins. Eventually, Mary finds Doll in the streets, frozen to death. She ponders taking Doll's body to a church, but instead of spending the money to do that, she pries a bottle of gin out of Doll's cold, blue hands.
Mary decides that she doesn't want to continue being a prostitute anymore and ventures out to the village her mother grew up in, in hopes of finding her mother's childhood friend, Jane Jones. On the way there, her money runs out much faster than she thought it would, so she ends up half-seducing one of the fellow carriage-riders, hysterically weeping and pretending to be a virgin, and getting payment that way. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that the guy is headed for the same small village as her, and is said village's pastor.
Mary gets an apprenticeship as a seamstress with Jane and lives with the Jones family.
Oh, and Mr. Jones only has one leg. I keep forgetting about this part (it's like the giant talking walrus in Wolf's Rain!).
The pastor ends up attemting to blackmail her, but when Mary decides needs money to escape her provincial life, he pimps her out to travellers and takes a cut of her money. Mr. Jones discovers her side job, she offers herself to him, and he takes her (with one leg, against a wall), feeling guilty the entire time about betraying Jane.
Jane finds Mary's stash of money and donates it to a church. Mary, in a fit of rage, steals Jane's stash of money, along with all the fancy clothes that they have been making. When Jane finds Mary running out with the money and the clothes, she attempts to stop Mary.
Mary's eyes alight on a cleaver in the kitchen.
She picks it up and starts hacking at Jane's neck. There is much description of blood and the look in Jane's eyes as she dies, horribly and miserably, by the hand of a girl she thought of as a daughter and a friend.
Mary gets hanged, and her final decision is to jump as they're pulling the cart out, so as to break her own neck instead of strangling.
The end.
Well, if "by popular demand," you mean "by the request of three people."
Here's my previous entry on the book.
Spoilers for Slammerkin
For the beginning hundred-or-so pages, I direct you to rachelmanija's entry:
"In less than a hundred pages, the desperately poor heroine's father dies, she is emotionally abused by her mother and stepfather, she is raped at the age of fourteen, she gets pregnant by her rapist, her parents disown her for being a slut, they throw her out and she is immediately beaten and gang raped, she gets a venereal disease from that rape, she becomes a prostitute, and since she's still pregnant, she gets her six-month fetus aborted by a hag with a sharpened stick."
After this, she hangs out with her prostitute friend Doll Higgins. Eventually, Mary finds Doll in the streets, frozen to death. She ponders taking Doll's body to a church, but instead of spending the money to do that, she pries a bottle of gin out of Doll's cold, blue hands.
Mary decides that she doesn't want to continue being a prostitute anymore and ventures out to the village her mother grew up in, in hopes of finding her mother's childhood friend, Jane Jones. On the way there, her money runs out much faster than she thought it would, so she ends up half-seducing one of the fellow carriage-riders, hysterically weeping and pretending to be a virgin, and getting payment that way. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that the guy is headed for the same small village as her, and is said village's pastor.
Mary gets an apprenticeship as a seamstress with Jane and lives with the Jones family.
Oh, and Mr. Jones only has one leg. I keep forgetting about this part (it's like the giant talking walrus in Wolf's Rain!).
The pastor ends up attemting to blackmail her, but when Mary decides needs money to escape her provincial life, he pimps her out to travellers and takes a cut of her money. Mr. Jones discovers her side job, she offers herself to him, and he takes her (with one leg, against a wall), feeling guilty the entire time about betraying Jane.
Jane finds Mary's stash of money and donates it to a church. Mary, in a fit of rage, steals Jane's stash of money, along with all the fancy clothes that they have been making. When Jane finds Mary running out with the money and the clothes, she attempts to stop Mary.
Mary's eyes alight on a cleaver in the kitchen.
She picks it up and starts hacking at Jane's neck. There is much description of blood and the look in Jane's eyes as she dies, horribly and miserably, by the hand of a girl she thought of as a daughter and a friend.
Mary gets hanged, and her final decision is to jump as they're pulling the cart out, so as to break her own neck instead of strangling.
The end.