Set in London during the summer of the cholera epidemic of 1849

Winner of the 1993 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize

RELEASE NOTES:

To be released at the BookCrossing meet tonight - everyone is welcome!

Picked this up at the Oxford meetup last night - thanks Molyneux!

A strange book, not sure why it won the Whitbread prize! Oh, just read cover again and it was a previous novel by this author that won.

In the first paragraph the main character, Joshua Jeavons (ridiculous and unbelievable name which is made worse by the fact that he often refers to himself in the third person) goes out measuring sewage flows and realises, "surprised, that juices were stirring in my loins". I nearly abandoned the book at this point...

The descriptions of Victorian London were interesting, but I didn't care for any of the characters. The plotline regarding Joshua's wife, Isobella, was rather opaque, OK I read bits of this book very quickly but I'm sure the author did not fully reveal this mystery.

Taking this to the Oxford meet-up on Weds, if noone picks it up it will be released at Holywells OBCZ.

RELEASE NOTES:

Released at the Holywells OBCZ (in the downstairs bar, right at the back on the OBCZ shelf)

Domesticated catch - i.e. from the Hollywells OBCZ. Cover intro. sounded interesting ...[one month later]... So it took me 200 of the 300+ pages to even care what was happening to Joshua, and as emilythegoat noted, perhaps Joshuas passion for public sanitation is not really brought across particularly well. Nonetheless I worked my way though this it wasn't a complete waste of time. Now I'd like to find a good book on Cholera in London in the mid 1800s, Kneale has sparked an interest. Passing on to map-maker.

Agreed, it's a bit of a strange book, IMHO it can't quite decide whether it wants to be social critique, scientific education or historic crime fiction so it doesn't come together very well. Re the "stirring juices" in Jeremia's loins while pursueing his research - isn't it nice when people can get passionate about their jobs or projects? ;-)
The book does, however, present a good case in point for the old adage about the way to hell being paved with good intentions and makes an edifying enough read for anybody with an interest in sanitation, epidemiology or C19 engineering, ah and of course the sufferings of an abandoned male; a nice change from recent reading matter - a male protagonist who doesn't seem to feel sorry for himself all of the time!