Tipping point

Emma Donoghue's powerful 2000 novel Slammerkin shows how delicately balanced a life can be — balanced between happiness and despair, success and failure, good and evil, a feeling of belonging and a feeling of abandonment.

The title of the novel, set in mid-18th century England, is an old word with two meanings: a loose gown or a loose woman. Both meanings become important to Donoghue's plot.

Mary is bright 14-year-old girl in London who, unlike so many girls, is getting an education. She gets pregnant after being raped, however, and is thrown out of the house by her mother. To survive, she turns to prostitution, then has an abortion. She quickly becomes settled into her new life, tutored by a new friend named Doll, who is just a few years older. Soon enough, we are told, she "couldn't remember what innocence looked like."

Due to a series of circumstances that put her life in danger, Mary flees to Monmouth, getting a job as a maid with Mrs. Jones, her mother's childhood friend. She tells the woman her mother is dead. Mrs. Jones makes gowns for upperclass women, and Mary turns out to be a talented seamstress and a big help to the business run by Mrs. Jones and her husband.

Mary misses her old life on the streets of London, yet loves being loved and accepted by this family. They begin to feel like they could be her own family. "She could almost believe she was a virgin again," we are told. Yet still thinking about returning to London, she turns to occasional prostitution and accumulates a bag of coins. This money proves her undoing.

The novel is based loosely on real people and real events. Always fascinating, the story packs an emotional wallop.