book, in the film she has the excuse that she has to collect a suitcase) where there is a new occupier (played by a hard-faced Nanette Newman in the film): inside, which was all I cared about just then. I didn't even bother to take in the details - they were pretty sordid, but I didn't notice them so they didn't depress me; perhaps because I was Caron's performance earned her the Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for best actress, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. [8] [9] [10]

Oh, I've met them,' she said. 'You can't help it. That John. He looks after me like he was my mother or Now that you are aware of the problems with the room, the next step is to find some solutions! But first it’s worth considering the function of your room. Jane went home to her father, a reserved man who had raised her alone, at the appointed time and she found a good job in hotel management. She made a success of it. I read this as a teenager, and it was probably the first teenage book I read. As such, it made a huge impression on me and made me think about gritty social issues which I had never before considered: abortion, teenage mothers, poverty. These were all things which I had no actual first-hand experience of, and the idea of the multiracial society was worlds away in my provincial town. I didn't realise that there were sequels to 'The L-Shaped Room'. It would be interesting to read the whole series to see how it progressed and to examine the issues again, thirty-something years on.

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I have been searching for this title for a couple of years now!!! (Could not remember the name of the author, and for a while there I thought the room was actually circular, ha ha!) Over a comforting cup of coffee, Jane reflects on her predicament, and a life that has similarities with the author’s own. Born in London in 1929, Lynne Reid Banks was evacuated to Canada during the Second World War, returning as a teenager in 1945 to train and then work as an actress. Jane’s recollections of pre-Equity survival in rep, living off tinned spaghetti in dreary northern towns, ring with the authenticity of autobiography. respect. I'm sorry for them - I don't suppose you believe that,but it's true...You probably think my life's some kind of tragedy, but I'll tell you - one of the hardest parts of it's keeping a

In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote "[Leslie Caron] pours into this role so much powerful feeling, so much heart and understanding, that she imbues a basically threadbare little story with tremendous compassion and charm.The credit, however, is not all Miss Caron's. She must share it with an excellent cast, including Tom Bell, a new actor who plays the writer on a par with her. Particularly she must share it with the remarkable young director Bryan Forbes, who also wrote the screenplay from a novel by Lynne Reid Banks. Mr Forbes is a sometime actor whose first directorial job was last year's beautiful and sensitive Whistle Down the Wind. In this little picture, he has achieved much the same human quality, with shadings of spiritual devotion, as in that." [6] Awards [ edit ]

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Lynne Reid Banks, born in 1929, and part of the post-war wave of newly “liberated” women entering the professional workplace in droves, initially pursued a career as a stage actress, then as a television journalist, and, following a demotion, as a television scriptwriter. She took revenge by writing the first draft of this novel “on a company typewriter, on a company paper, on company time.” One of my highlights from last year’s reading was participating in a Jean Rhys reading week. So when I saw that Waterstones Gower Street is doing a ‘Forgotten Fiction’ reading group where they’ll be discussing Jean Rhys’ “Voyage in the Dark” as well as Lynne Reid Banks’ seminal book first published in 1960, I jumped at the chance to read this classic novel for the first time. Before I even started reading I felt a big bout of nostalgia as I realized Reid Banks also wrote one of my favourite children’s books “The Indian in the Cupboard.” This imaginative drama takes place in a child’s bedroom where he can bring his toys to life and I connected with it so strongly when I was young. It’s interesting to now read Reid Banks’ gritty realist novel that represents the experience of being a single young woman whose father has thrown her out of their home for being pregnant. The novel incisively portrays the social prejudices the heroine Jane faces and the internalized shame she feels as a consequence, but also how her strength of will helps her endure and establish a new life for herself. In 1950s London, Jane Graham, pregnant after a one-night stand she regrets, is thrown out by her father, takes a room for thirty bob a week on the top floor of a squalid house in Fulham and starts to meet her fellow housemates. I read this and liked it in 1993, and was not disappointed this time around. It’s an engaging, readable book that had me living and breathing the 1950s, and isn’t overly sentimental, which it could have been.

The film was restored and issued on DVD and blu-ray in 2017; extras include later interviews with Caron and Reid Banks. The important thing was that Jane grew up. I met a proud and independent young woman, I followed her though many ups and downs, and I saw her mature and become wiser, and more understanding of the people and the world around her. Now you’re going to ask me if I hate all men. Well I don’t. You can’t hate what you don’t respect. I’m sorry for them – I don’t suppose you believe that, but it’s true… You probably think my life’s some kind of tragedy, but I’ll tell you – one of the hardest parts of it’s keeping a straight face.”

11th Annual Canadian Book Challenge

The analogy of turning a corner in one’s life and the shape of the room could be banal, but is never laboured. I think the main flaw is that most of the major points in the plot are annoyingly easy to spot in advance and although Jane is intelligent and often quite perceptive about people, she doesn’t anticipate any of them. Nevertheless, it generally avoids moralising and sentimentality, even when talking about the “spiritual bleeding” when lovers have to separate too soon after making love. Taking pity on Jane’s obviously reduced circumstances he finally finds a little heart, directing her to his friend Frank’s café for a decent cuppa. ‘Pity they don’t divide cafés off into salon and public, if you ask me. People like to be with their own sort. Not as how you’d find many of your sort around here…’ Establish the walkways through the room. Where are the doors? Are there doors to the garden, the hallway, the kitchen? Think about the pathways through the room. You will want to walk easily around the room, creating a natural flow, rather than falling over furniture or bashing your shin on a coffee table!