Union Street

Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.

Set in

• ★
  Middlesbrough · United Kingdom

  Northeast England — working-class women
  ★ primary
• ★
  Yorkshire · United Kingdom

  1970s deindustrializing northeast England, seven working-class women
  ★ primary