Iris - Hardcover

Marsh, Jean

2.78

46 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312261829 ISBN 13: 9780312261825

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 2000

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An award-winning television writer and actress offers a portrait of London's social facades in the years after World War II, following Iris, a girl who comes close to prostitution, as she loses any pretext to innocence in an increasingly dangerous world

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About the Author:

Jean Marsh, the much-acclaimed British author of both the television and novel versions of The House of Eliott, in an earlier incarnation was co-author of the Emmy Award-winning series Upstairs, Downstairs, in which she played the unforgettable Rose. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

From Publishers Weekly:

Upstairs, Downstairs creator Marsh compassionately depicts a stark postwar London through the eyes of 17-year-old "tart" Iris Winston, who shares with her pre-Beatles motherland a dangerous blend of innocence, na?vet? and a kind of willful refusal to see things for what they are. Iris convinces herself she isn't really a prostitute, though she regularly accepts cab fare, dinner and small gifts in exchange for providing predatory men with sexual favors, as when she talks dirty to an MP over lunch. Her lifestyle, insouciant but rife with danger and humiliations, centers on hip clubs and expensive restaurants, in stark contrast to the gloomy family flat she returns to every night. The virginal, childlike Iris seems oblivious to what others think of her, but in one afternoon, everything changes. Five upper-class men with whom she had been sharing a midday drink take her to an apartment and gang-rape her. Iris keeps this brutal awakening secret as she continues to live party to party and pound to pound, wary of the city's underworld but finding a dubious security among gay friends and Mafia families. Marsh's measured plot takes a sharp turn when Iris becomes a stand-in for a famous actress and marries Peter, a sympathetic restaurateur. Thirteen years later, in 1965, their marriage is on the rocks. Peter leaves for New York while Iris runs their restaurant/club, where she encounters Michael, the brother of one of her rapists. Though Iris can trust Michael, the secret surfaces and she uses her organized crime connections to protect her reputation. The two disparate parts of Marsh's story are held together only tenuously, however, and elements meant to link the two, such as the London-New York mob subplots, seem contrived. Actress and novelist Marsh does, however, paint an affecting portrait of Iris's loss of innocence, backgrounded by sharp and vivid societal detail. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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