Another one from Bristol. I had read this years ago. Found it quite hard going; she doesn’t write very fluently about people so the characters are thematic rather than developed easily as people.
Margaret, the heroine, is a young woman to whom a string of things happen, and is mainly reactive.
The book is framed by the South, but the North is the central character and some of her dialogue dealing with the social and linguistic interaction is quite stilted.
Possibly Mr Higgins is the first developed working class character in English fiction, but, like Margaret, he is a bit of a cipher.
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