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Author: Tennyson Jesse, F.

Classic fiction (pre c 1945)

Published on 25 November 2021 by British Library Publishing in the United Kingdom as part of ‘the British Library Women Writers’ series.

Paperback | 320 pages
132 x 191 x 34 | 350g

Julia Almond believes she is special and dreams of a more exciting and glamorous life away from the drab suburbia of her upbringing. Her work in a fashionable boutique in the West End gives her the personal freedom that she craves but escape from her parental home into marriage soon leads to boredom and frustration. She begins a passionate affair with a younger man, which has deadly consequences. Based on the events of a sensational murder trial in the 1920s – the Thompson/Bywaters case – Julia becomes trapped by her sex and class in a criminal justice system in which she has no control. Julia finds herself the victim of society’s expectations of lower-middle-class female behaviour and incriminated by her own words. Tennyson Jesse creates a flawed, doomed heroine in a novel of creeping unease that continues to haunt long after the last page is turned.