The L-Shaped Room

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I sat there, savouring an uncanny feeling of omniscience. I could see the future as clearly as if I were sitting The novel tells the story, in the first person, of Jane Graham, a 27-year-old unmarried pregnant woman, thrown out of Who Shall I Run To? - Sally recalls how she and ex-husband Jeremy celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary with a romantic trip to Paris. Read by Siân Phillips.

a b "The L-shaped Room (1962)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 28 February 2016. 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! This was published before the sixties swung (1960) and is the story of Jane, an upper middle class girl of 27 who finds herself pregnant and single. She moves out of her father’s house, into an L-shaped room in a dodgy house in a dodgy area. Each book is rated in its own context, NOT in comparison to the entire range of literature, which would, of course, be an impossible task.

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That said, the area in which the market resides, between Lillie Road and Walham Grove Road, near Fulham Broadway tube, still has echoes of the grotty old place. Pound shops, pawnbrokers and dubious fast food outlets abound – and while some of the windows may be made of UPVC these days, they retain their sinister regard. I agree with Paul Bryant, it was often awkward and unnerving. I didn't know that the 50-ties in the UK had prejudices still 'flowing in the veins'. I am tempted to quote some ridiculous opinions about homosexuality or Jews (or people with darker skin), just to show you their absurdity, but it is better to bury them. By the way, mentioned Paul Bryant wrote that (50 years after the novel was first published) Lynne Reid Banks said she is ashamed of those times/people today.

Though The L-Shaped Room had a much more sordid setting, it was more fairy tale-ish in its conclusions. From my remembrance, The Millstone was more humorous, yet more realistic. Characteristically, I prefer the latter. This is a mixed bag of a story. It's good. It tells an important & interesting story. But it's a story of its time (late 1950s) with racism, prejudices and phobias. Oh come now, father,” I said, not able to help laughing. “Polecats smell vile. John doesn’t smell like one at all.” Jane befriends the other residents and they help her when she goes into labour. Toby visits her in hospital and gives her a copy of his new story, called The L-Shaped Room. After leaving hospital, Jane journeys home to her parents in France, saying goodbye to the room where she has lived for seven months.

She planned to keep herself to herself, to keep her baby, and eventually to bring up her child alone. The l-shaped room. A dingey, grubby, awkward space in a run down boarding house. Jane could have afforded something better – she had savings, she still had her job – but she chose not to.

Her self-awareness and the way she analyses her feelings and those of people around make the novel transcend its period – although she dislikes Toby’s “useless fund of self-knowledge”. At times she wants to punish herself, and telling her father was like a bullfight, “I didn’t want to see the bull killed; I just wanted to know what it would do to me to see it.” There is warmth and humour too, including meeting someone “who wasn’t even the sort of person you could enjoy being rude to.” Jane is an endearing character. At first she came across as arrogant and snotty but maturity gives her depth. The room of Jane’s self-enforced confinement has been created from one much larger by the simple expediency of a partition wall. Crammed inside are a gas stove; a wash-basin doubling up as a sink; a table scarred with cigarette burns; a camp bed covered in a wartime afghan (a multi-coloured knitted blanket); a three-legged chest of drawers, a lumpy armchair and a mantelpiece adorned with two plaster Alsatians, under which resides a tiny gas fire. The Alsatians fill Jane with horror; the afghan affords her solace. Lynne Reid Banks was one of the first female news-reporters at ITN. Although she complained she was always given 'soft stories' she did not consider herself a feminist at the time, which is ironic, as the L-Shaped Room is considered as a feminist novel. Th e clever twist in the film is that Toby, visiting Jane in hospital after the baby is born, has written a short story called - of course - 'The L-Shaped Room'.Jane is a brave character who decides to bring up the baby by herself, after her father throws her out. But her feelings are mixed, and as almost a punishment to herself she rents a grubby L-shaped room at the top of a run- down boarding house in Fulham. You can still furnish your bedsit and feed yourself from North End Road market, on any day of the week. Established in 1887, some stallholders are the descendants of the original costermongers – but the newsagent would be horrified at the multitude of different nationalities that have joined them since: Egyptian, Moroccan, Turkish, Filipino and Caribbean, to name but a few. Doris blazed a trail – the residents of this part of Fulham are now truly multicultural.

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.” Despite this story's time-based deficiencies, this story is real, showing the dilemma of a young woman who has to find her own way after an unwanted pregnancy changes her life in ways it no longer does today. This book explores love, in all of it's various forms, and I enjoyed that. Jane meets people from all walks of life, and realises that she needs these individuals, just as much as they need her, and they help her grow in confidence. As the reader, this was joyous to read about. What do you want of me father? I thought fiercely. What have you ever wanted? Not this anyway. Not a scandal, not a bastard grandchild. This won’t go far to make up for my shortcomings, like not being a son and like killing my mother by getting born.

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The film was restored and issued on DVD and blu-ray in 2017; extras include later interviews with Caron and Reid Banks. Both film and book end quite tamely in that respect, as Jane's father turns up once the baby is born (boy in the book, Don’t you go paying your rent on the dot, miss,” he advises. “You keep the old cow waiting, like she does me.” This sour old boy regards the ‘chippies’ in the basement as more honourable than ‘that old faggot’ Doris, with her cavalier attitude to the settlement of bills and disregard for current popular opinion on race relations. His speech is littered with references to ‘bobos’ who ‘have got to be kept in their place’, the casual deployment of which gives as tangible a feel for the attitudes of the time as the descriptive evocation of the place. 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]