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The East End of London, Victorian London 1884. The crowded tenements, the poor standard of living, the diseases, the crime and the vice are all inhabitants of this darkest of places, yet people here are not insular nor vying to be better than their neighbour's. This is an environment where everyone looks out for one another, where despite poverty, friendship is watchword and this is the world in which twelve-year-old Alice Kettle sweeps her street crossing, keeping it clear for people to cross the road without the detritus of Victorian traffic fouling their person.
A job she does to earn pennies to help support her mother's family through these hard times. Alice however is an unsuspecting target for that most foul of purveyors of human flesh, the purchasers of young girls who take them from their homes and then force them to work in the high class brothels which are mostly frequented by the moneyed classes. Charlie Atkin has Alice in his sights and he sets his devious plans into action in order to make a pretty penny from the appropriation of Alice, this despite the efforts of the Social Sisters movement to change the laws on the current age of consent and prostitution in general.
A book that follows Alice through the trials that await her as her life is suddenly turned on her head. Will she escape her fate?Excerpts from reviews of East End Alice. This book grabbed me from the start with its gritty, dark image of late 1880s London's East End and the vivid, raw representation of its characters. I have always been fascinated by the history and images of the period, and this book delivers that.
One of the first things to draw me was the author's use of dialect. The depiction of the abject poverty of the people that lived in London's East End was heart breaking, but the character of Alice was heart-warming and uplifting. Before reading the book, I delved into the author's page at Amazon. Charley B. is a writer of erotica, but this book is not erotica at all. Instead, the author begins each chapter with excerpts and snippets illustrating the history of the fight in England for social reform pertaining to the prostitution and forced enslavement of young girls in the brothels that catered to the upper class.
The book is quite enlightening and educational, while at the same time, entertaining. It moves at a fast pace and is never boring. East End Alice is about a 12 year old girl living with her mother in East End, London. A nasty character comes into her life, and gets her sold into slavery, working as a maid in a high end brothel in London. The rather evil owners of the brothel sees poor Alicia as a future prospect for a new prostitute.
Without revealing any more of the plot, I will only note that this to me is a feel-good story, it's not a tragedy, and that in itself is an important point. Its not nice to read tragedies involving a child and prostitution. The story is paralleled by the real development of legislation against child prostitution in England in the late 19th century. Reading the novel made me think a lot about the fates of children trafficked into prostitution today.
It a really horrible situation. I really enjoyed reading East End Alice. The dialogue took getting used to, as much of it is written in Cockney English, but that really adds to the authenticity of the novel. I highly recommend this novel!
