My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time - Hardcover

Jensen, Liz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747584184 ISBN 13: 9780747584186

Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

Charlotte supports herself and her lumpen sidekick, Fru Schleswig, by working as a prostitute in fin-de-siecle Copenhagen. But the course of harlotry never runs smooth, and Charlotte's life is altered irrevocably when, one hard winter, she stumbles on an exciting new source of income.
A dark mansion, home to the disagreeable Fur Krak, is in dire need of a top-to-bottom scrub and the wealthy widow is hiring. Enter Charlotte, dragging behind her the reluctant and militantly idle Fru Schleswig. Transformed into cleaning ladies, the squabbling duo attack the dark abode but soon discover that mysteries abound. The basement appears to be haunted, and there are rumours of desperate souls entering it - never to emerge.
Charlotte decides to turn detective - but finds herself outwitted by the mysterious controller of a demonic machine which wastes no time in catapulting her into twenty-first-century London, a baffling world of glass, tin, and labour-saving devices. Luckily a handsome stranger is more than happy to show her the ropes ...

About this title

About the Author:

Liz Jensen is the author of Egg Dancing (long-listed for the Orange Prize), Ark Baby (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and long-listed for the Orange Prize), The Paper Eater, War Crimes for the Home (long-listed for the Orange Prize), and The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, currently in development as a major motion picture by Anthony Minghella. She divides her time between Copenhagen and London.

From Publishers Weekly:

When 25-year-old Charlotte Schleswig begins telling her madcap tale in 1897, she's a successful prostitute roaming the suburban streets near Denmark's capital. A random meeting in a bakery leads her to begin working as a domestic for Fru Krak, an anxious woman whose husband has recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances and who may now be haunting the very streets Charlotte walks. Charlotte soon sets out to find the missing Professor Krak, and in the course of her investigations discovers 21st-century London, a whole new world of mobile phones, microwaves, flavored condoms, suicide machines and a handsome archeologist named Fergus. Jensen (The Ninth Life of Louis Drax) satisfactorily coats a predictable romance with a shiny time-traveling sci-fi glaze, mixes a dash of irony and suspense, and pushes it all through Charlotte's energetic first person, which carries the book. The final result is fun and sometimes scintillating, but not necessarily delicious—like a flavored condom. (July)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0747584184
• ISBN 13: 9780747584186
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320