The Great Stink by Clare Clark
Historical fiction at its grittiest. I have the habit, good or bad, or finishing every book I start. I rarely come across one I cannot finish, even if I don’t like it – and yes, there I books I do not like, and I do promise to tell you about them as well. The Great Stink is one that was well worth persevering through the beginning somewhat tedious descriptions of how bad London smelled in the days before they redid the sewer system in Victorian times. Trust me, it smelled really awfully bad, and you can skim over the description of the layers of smell and get to the story. When it finally gets going, it is a good one.
The main characters, besides the Sewers of London, includes William, a man who has returned from the horrors of the Crimean War badly emotionally damaged, but still good at heart. Nowadays we’d recognize it as PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and his coping method as Self-Mutilation – he’s a cutter, but keeps this secret from those around him. Another central character is Long Arm Tom – and his foundling dog – who makes his living scavenging in the sewers William is busy mapping for the planning commission. The two get tangled up in a web of murder, crime and political corruption, and William comes close to losing his very sanity trying to cope, and Tom his heart.
At the heart of the tale are also two very real, touching and sweet love stories, and all the characters are well-fleshed out and seem very genuine. If you can stand graphic descriptions of some of life’s genuine horrors, and are not squeamish about blood, flesh, sewage and decay, this is a very good book. And it turns out that William, and his PTSD, are of course Victorian-era counterparts to so many soldiers returning now from Iraq and Afghanistan. I recommend it, if you can stomach it.
And how come we never studied the Crimean War in school, and I just know about from Florence Nightingale books I read as a kid? Just an aside.