‘One Hundred Views Of NW3’ creates, for us a colourful and realistic picture of London during the 1960s.
We see this through the eyes and mind of Stella, an art student who has just graduated and plans to create a number of pictures as she goes. The biggest problem for Stella is, she seems to gain more material from life as she moves through it. She has to scrimp and scrape, eventually gaining a place to stay. Discovering that the horrible jobs she gets, are just dead-end ones and leave her no room to be creative.
Then we have the men, the users and abusers, never ready to commit. As she flails through time she slowly reduces the number of her pictures, down to 36. It is like life is beating her to the ground, every time she has a knockback she finds less to create.
I liked Stella and her quest, the fact that she keeps going, through the sexism and exploitation and even the poverty she comes up against. She sees this with her own pragmatic view and her curiosity with the world and her real interest in other people make her a great main character in this story. The fact that she CAN still be inventive along with her creativity shows us nothing will halt the high she gains from her art.
A book perfectly paced to keep us engrossed in Stella’s life throughout made it as compelling as interesting with the snapshot
of life in the 1960s.
Thank you to Rachel’s Randoms Resources and the author for the copy of the book to be included in this tour today.
sharonbeyondthebooks.uk 