As a young woman, Tess falls into activism and the influence of a charismatic environmental protester. She has never been happier. When he suddenly disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone, she is devastated. Gradually Tess rebuilds her life with her baby daughter Mia.

Trespass by Clare Clark | Goodreads

A novel about love — and state-sanctioned impunity … Paranoid fantasy or reality? Brilliant, chilling’– Helena Kennedy QC In the garden the ants were taking flight, clouds of them swirling upwards like ash from a bonfire. When Tess closed her eyes, the ants went on rising in the darkness, only now the swirls were silver. Condition: Like New. Publisher: Harvest/Harcourt, NY, 2006. First Softcover Edition, First Printing. FINE softcover book in pictorial/illustrated wraps, as issued. Not remainder marked. Not a book club edition. Not an ex-library copy.As a teenager, Tess falls into environmental activism - and the arms of an older, charismatic protester. She has never been happier. When he suddenly disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone, she is shattered. Slowly, though, she rebuilds a life for herself and her daughter Mia. "We're all we need," she sings to Mia as they dance around the kitchen. "Me and you, us two."

Trespass by Clare Clark | Hachette UK Trespass by Clare Clark | Hachette UK

He closes his eyes. Sweat greases his scalp. His head throbs, his hand too. It usually only bothers him when it’s cold. He presses his thumb hard into the scarred skin, presses till the pain is in his shoulder, the base of his skull. He should never have come. It was stupid to think it would help, that it would make things clearer. Stupid and deluded. Clark seems to be good at writing insufferable characters, and the main character Eliza is included in this. She came across as unlikable and dumb (despite being described by others as witty and clever), and I was put off by her fantasies of basically torturing and killing her unborn child, which she always refers to as her "worm." I know that she came to London for an abortion, but she certainly takes it a step further and there seems to be some sort of twisted relish to this. I liked the main character Eliza, at last a heroine that doesn't devote her entire existence to finding a man to love her. although this was refreshing- I did feel slightly bereft of a happy ever after. I like loose ends to be tied up, so what happened after? and where did Petey go?! Clare Clark’s critically acclaimed The Great Stink “reeks of talent” ( The Washington Post Book World) as it vividly brings to life the dark and mysterious underworld of Victorian London. Set in 1855, it tells the story of William May, an engineer who has returned home to London from the horrors of the Crimean War. When he secures a job trans­forming the city’s sewer system, he believes that he will be able to find salvation in the subterranean world beneath the city. But the peace of the tunnels is shattered by a murder, and William is implicated as the killer. Could he truly have committed the crime? How will he bring the truth above-ground?

E tutta via non basta a far sì che questo romanzo prenda. Lo stile è semplice e descrittivo, scurrile in molte parti poichè narrato dal punto di vista di Eliza, che non brilla per cultura o educazione. Sicuramente compie un'evoluzione da personaggio negativo a positivo, ma tutto ciò risulta quasi forzato, poichè tutto il resto dei personaggi attorno a lei è -per usare un francesismo- una merda. E siccome gli unici personaggi positivi erano giusto Mary, che essendo ritardata non può essere granchè come personaggio, e due comparse, bisognava rimediare sacrificando l'antieroina. As with Monsters, Clark's tale plots the development of a person's humanity. In the case of William, a person who's lost his and must find a way to regain it or go mad. In the case of Tom, a person who knows there's a void in his life but doesn't know what it is or how to fill it. Alla fine della lettura, ho potuto dividere il romanzo in due parti: la prima, in cui Eliza vuole abortire a tutti i costi, e la seconda, in cui Eliza vuole salvare Mary. Questi erano i grandi obiettivi attorno a cui ruotavano i pensieri della protagonista, e purtroppo non erano abbastanza. I think Clark intended this book to have a creepiness permeating it as she centered her story around a time when medicine was still as much about superstition as it was about scientific investigation. Instead, I found it mostly dull. I wasn't able to connect much with any of the characters, finding they tried my patience more than stirred my sympathies or my horror. I also didn't care much for her story telling format. The majority of the plot was from the first person perspective of the main character, Eliza, except for the end of each chapter, which was usually the insane written ramblings of her apothecary master. I felt these endings pushed the book into the area of melodrama. I hardly needed them to come to realize the extent of the apothecary's obsession, and I think he would have been more interesting with a little more mystery. As for the epilogue (technically the last chapter, but epilogue it was), it was one of the more bizarrely disjointed ones I've read, suddenly bringing in new elements instead of wrapping up the old. I should have stopped listening somewhere in the middle, but I kept hoping it would improve. As an arts journalist and theatre critic, Laura has written regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph and Time Out London. She also writes non-fiction, short stories, and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University and has mentored for the Arts Emergency and Spread the Word.

Clare Clark: Read an Extract | Hachette UK Trepass by Clare Clark: Read an Extract | Hachette UK

Let me begin with a warning: this is not a book for someone with a weak stomach. Expect to come across gruesome, vile, downright revolting, in-depth descriptions of Victorian London’s notorious underground sewer which was responsible for its reputation as the filthiest city in the world in the mid 1800s. An aside: The great stink of London was so all-pervasive that even distinguished medical professionals attributed the frequent outbreaks of cholera and dysentery to the miasma which they believed was caused by the noxious fumes emanating from the river Thames. This is pre Jospeh Lister times and the link between sanitation and infection was hitherto unknown. I really loved Clare Clark's writing. The following passage is about the main character William May and how he thinks about the sewers;At the heart of the narrative, though, is one significant failure. It may well be intentional. Clark interleaves three voices to tell her story – those of Tess, Mia and Dave. She signally fails to explain or humanise the last of these: as the novel proceeds he becomes steadily more monstrous, until his behaviour is almost unbearable to read about. It may be Clark’s contention that such men are simply monsters. However, the value of extending Evans and Lewis’s work into fiction is surely the opportunity to go deeper into the lives and motivations of all the people caught up in these atrocities. Trespass does not fully pursue this. Having met Mark Kennedy once while he was still undercover, and been haunted by that meeting ever since, I could not help but wish it had. Unfortunately, these glimmers of interest ended up being few and far between, drowned out by how many things I really didn't like about the book.