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West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves And Friendships Of 1940s Soho And Its Working Girls (2010)

by Barbara Tate(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1409116069 (ISBN13: 9781409116066)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Orion Publishing

review 1: An enjoyable and insightful read.I felt as though some of the characters in this book had become my friends - It's all in the way Tate portrays them I guess, maybe it's that I saw a little of myself in Barbara.The end of the book almost had me feeling like I was grieving for someone, yet you could almost see it coming - I still found myself reading on to find out what became of these people, and with each person a hope of happier times. Although it wasn't the case I would certainly read this again.Tate raises good points on how the girls who were running their businesses were pushed out of sight for seedy massage parlours to spring up and billboards with women who weren't dressed as well as the working girls may have been.After reading this book I had to hand it back to m... morey local library (which incidentally is in a red light district) and felt a pang of loss at putting it on the counter. It was easy to feel for the characters and you felt like you really knew some of them, especially Barbara.On the whole I feel like I have caught a glimpse into another, darker yet crazy and hectic world and am happy to have 'met' those girls.
review 2: An incredible tale that almost didn't make it to publication. Barbara Tate tells the story of her time as a prostitute's maid in Soho in a light engaging style that makes for easy reading. On several levels it's an amazing tale - the story itself and the insight it gives into Soho then and when she revisited later; how she came to be there at all; how the book came to be blocked when she first tried for publication (that story is added at the end). She went on to have a very successful career as an artist, coming back to her manuscript in later life. It feels as though it should be a tragedy that she didn't live to see the book in print, and yet having heard her tale, I suspect the big thing for her was to know that it was on the way. less

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