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!) Top Tip - don’t design your room around the exceptions, like Christmas. Think about how many people will use the room on an average day - otherwise you risk overcrowding the space with too much or too large furniture that you really only need three times a year! 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. She had been an actress, with a touring company, and she was doing well. She didn’t have much money, but she managed, she was happy doing what she wanted to do with her life. But Jane got on the wrong side of a difficult actor, and was ‘let go’.

I sat there, savouring an uncanny feeling of omniscience. I could see the future as clearly as if I were sitting tell the truth and shame the devil - what are you, one of these writers? Or an actress, going to play a prossie or something, is that it? I've met your sort before.' But she didn'tJane is an endearing character. At first she came across as arrogant and snotty but maturity gives her depth. I wasn't expecting too much from this novel, so I went into it not feeling terribly hopeful, but what I received was a compelling and a somewhat poignant story of what it was to be a pregnant, unmarried woman in 1950's London.

I read this as a youngster (I was in my late teens) and was intrigued by this story of a young woman who decided to keep her baby despite being unmarried and unsupported by the baby's father. She was very bohemian, but despite the fact that the action of this story is taking place in the swinging 60's, Jane's straight laced father was not "hip with the times." Loved the movie, but the book was better, despite Leslie Caron's excellent performance. (Not that it matters for this particular review, but I am pro-choice. Just wanted to make it clear that I am not advocating or judging anything here.)The L shaped room is where Jane retreated to after her Father, her only hope, threw her out on the street. I'll admit, that made me feel pretty angry, but Jane Graham was a surprisingly capable and wonderfully strong character, that was unfiltered and unapologetically, herself. I liked her character, and her will to survive.

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, However, if one reads this as a book of its time, this is a warm, heartfelt story of growth, including getting beyond racial slurs, class distinctions and the stigma of being an unwed mother. 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. 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.” Perhaps some of my reluctance to fully embrace this story has something to do with the style of the writing, often very much “statement of fact”; almost wooden at times. But mostly I just did not find Jane as worthy of sincere interest and affection as I would have liked; this sort of story, to work for me, has to have a much more deserving-of-my-regard protagonist. I often felt that the fictional Jane created many of her own problems, then moped about stewing in her resultant misery, before being bailed out by various strangely willing “white knights”– her supervisor James, Toby and John, her father (who almost immediately after telling her to leave writes begging her to return), and, most improbably of all, her eccentric Aunt Addy, who appears out of the blue, after never being previously mentioned, offering succour at the most opportune moment.Banks was born in London, the only child of James and Muriel Reid Banks. She was evacuated to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada during World War II but returned after the war was over. She attended St Teresa's School in Surrey. Prior to becoming a writer Banks was an actress, and also worked as a television journalist in Britain, one of the first women to do so. Her first novel, The L-Shaped Room, was published in 1960. Haworth, Catherine; Colton, Lisa (3 March 2016). Gender, Age and Musical Creativity. Routledge. ISBN 9781317130055– via Google Books. 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.