The Silk Weaver by Liz Trenow

This was such a beautiful tale with a very modern heroine transplanted to the 18th Century.  Despite being brought up in a cloistered setting (rural vicarage) Anna's outlook on the world and her role in it are decidedly not what you would expect from an 18th Century girl - not fer her the hope of husband and family, she wants so much more from life.  When she is to move to London to stay with relatives of her father she sees her opportunity to have the life she wants and not what society dictates she should want.  At least that is what I came away with from this tale.

It is richly evocative of the times and, although fiction, it does give a relatively good facsimile of life in 18th Century London where class structure seems to rule above all else.  Transplanted to this bustling city we learn about the machinations of society and the clear delineations between each class (much more complicated than the three classes you would expect - even the "middle class" have a strata of acceptability within it) through Anna's experience and her kicking against it's petty rules and restrictions.  This is never more apparent than the schism between the silk weavers that supply her uncle and her uncle's family.  They are seen as being almost less than human and yet without their undoubted artistry and talent the merchants would have little to sell.

The romance between Anna and Henri is beautifully written and you do become involved in this fictional life.  The street scenes - particularly in the market place, are vivid and you can almost smell that uniquely silk scent of the weaving lofts.  The perils of the weavers demonstrations and riots are brought to life quite well on the page but it is the harsh and, sometimes arbitrary, justice that is brought to bear on them that really stands out.  The sections within Newgate Prison do raise the hairs on your neck.

I just felt that it all ended rather abruptly, with a single chapter summing up the rest of Anna's life after Henri completes his Master piece.  I didn't expect another couple of hundred pages detailing every nuance of her experience but the end felt rushed and needlessly truncated.  The historical timeline has been juggled about a bit for the purposes of the story but the author has gone to the trouble in the afterword of giving both her inspiration for our heroine but also the actual historical facts that buttress the tale which is always a welcome addition to this genre of novel.

A good strong read that sucks you in to a time that feels, moralistically, a million years from ours own but is really only a couple of corners back.