Pat Barker's extraordinary first novel, "Union Street," deserved every bit of the high praise heaped on it…. Set in England's grim and grimy Northeast, its seven loosely linked chapters offer a vision of working-class women's lives that is mordant, heartbreaking and—at least to my knowledge—unique…. Delicately and compassionately, Mrs. Barker caught the central contradiction of her heroines' lives, which is that they believe in female inferiority while being themselves far stronger than their menfolk, and derive their sense of worth from keeping up a front of brisk respectability that divides them from each other.
"Blow Your House Down" is set in the same part of England as "Union Street"—perhaps even the same neighborhood…. And when we meet Brenda, the first section's main character, she seems like just another Union Street matron, hurrying through the evening chores in order to meet a friend for a drink. And an ordinary Union Street matron is exactly what Brenda is, except that like Kath and Audrey and Jean and the other women who gather each night for lager-and-lime at the Palmerston pub, she is a prostitute. She is also a woman who is risking her life—a homicidal maniac is on the loose and prostitutes are his prey.
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