Slammerkin

In 1748, Mary Saunders is born into a poor family in working-class London, where every garment is rough and plain. She craves velvet and lace instead. That craving pulls her into prostitution, which gives her a degree of independence that a sheltered, well-behaved girl of the period would never have known.

Clothing sits at the centre of the story. Its glamour can be as misleading as it is seductive, and through the clothes she acquires and the pretences they allow, Mary edges toward serious danger.

Emma Donoghue, an Irish-born writer best known for the novel Room, drew on a real eighteenth-century case for this book. The result recreates the streets and social divisions of the period while tracing the restless, furious inner life of a teenager trying to remake herself.