Being that I’m a mood reader, I wasn’t ready to pick this up just yet but as I’m on a tour for it soon, it seemed like a good idea . A clever device which enables the author to reveal both his and her versions of the story side by side, as the two voices alternate. Rich in historical detail, The Trial of Lotta Raetransports us to suffragette London, combining fact and fiction featuring key historical figures. Steeped in history, the author has set the story against a backdrop of the suffragettes’ struggle, transporting you back to a time when doctors believed that only with consent could you conceive, and any woman who just walks with a man is seen as leading him on.

The Trial of Lotta Rae by Siobhan MacGowan | Goodreads The Trial of Lotta Rae by Siobhan MacGowan | Goodreads

Lotta Rae has a ghostly, disarming voice that deepens to a savage clarity, pulling you into this gripping story of injustice, intrigue and revenge set at the turn of the 20th century. What follows is nothing short of a travesty of justice, Griffiths is totally cleared of the rape and Lotta is branded a slut. Some time in the early nineteen seventies a brother and sister with Irish roots busked for pennies around Kings Cross in London. What surprised me the most about the book was that the trial itself wasn't the book's main focus but rather the aftermath. Now, they will travel to a fateful destination where truths must be faced and wrongs must be righted.But her and her family’s lives are torn apart by a corrupt legal system that exonerates the powerful and male and penalises the poor and female. Through a story of inglorious losers on the pitch, he shows that ordinary, decent people will not be defeated off it. Set in London during the time of the Suffragettes, a 15 year old girl is attacked by an affluent gentleman.

The Trial of Lotta Rae | Siobhan MacGowan | 9781787397811 The Trial of Lotta Rae | Siobhan MacGowan | 9781787397811

I enjoyed these very different perspectives, though it did get a little confusing going back and forth between them in the same chapter at times. Coupled with his questionable financial status and career prospects at the time, he accepts and his lack of integrity is soon realised. Revealing that she is dead by the end of the book is not a spoiler because it soon becomes apparent that her presence beside William Linden on an important journey, during which her story is told, is as a ghost haunting and tormenting him.When her attacker is triumphantly acquitted with no stain on his character, Lotta is publicly shamed as a fallen woman, even a harlot. The book starts in 1906, covering events on the run up to World War 1 as well as the political goings on in the United Kingdom with the suffragette movement which both Lotta and Raff become involved with. The Trial of Lotta Rae by Siobhan MacGowan tells the story of Lotta Rae, a young working class girl who was attacked on Halloween night 1906, and William Linden, the barrister tasked with prosecuting her attacker. Women don’t have the vote and the movement to get the vote continued to grow and become more violent.

Books in brief: Stories of isolation and grief, and the death

Fascinating, heart wringing book - as a reader I felt like a helpless bystander who raged and mourned with Lotta and her family.Lotta and her circle express the optimism of the late Edwardian period, a sense that the new century would bring social change, equality and freedom. Where her brother's most well known work is a hymn of praise for down and out Irish émigrés in New York, The Trial of Lotta Rae combines an homage to the suffragette movement with a passionate anti-war message and a lament for the absence of justice for those who lack power. Because when Lotta is defended by barrister William Linden, little does she know that those in power will simply throw her to the wolves. When things don’t go the girl’s way, her life is never the same again and she finds herself in pursuit of vengeance. Supported by her mam and pap, she makes the decision to press charges against him, believing that her lawyer William Lindon will fight the good fight and do her justice.

The Trial of Lotta Rae: The unputdownable - WHSmith

When the devastating verdict is announced it sparks a chain of tragic events that will alter Lotta’s life forever. We are a group of dedicated readers who have joined forces to bring you the best reviews of current and classic novels. Lotta is brutally attacked at a Halloween party by a “gentleman”, a successful businessman with friends in government. Just finished this beautifully written book and now sat with a headache from crying and all the thoughts I'm feeling now I'm finished. I loved this book, but some mornings I would wake and dread reading the next stave (we read in 10 staves with The Pigeonhole) thinking ‘can things get any worse for her?Fagan sets out the background clearly and succinctly, reports on the trial comprehensively and shows how the quest to prove Gordon’s innocence threw up some unlikely heroes, especially Quaker Dorothy Turtle. Talking of which, I wanted a bit more wrap up on what happened to that particular piece of disgusting human.