#Novella 2022 Elizabeth Jolley

 

• Author: Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007)
  
• Title:  The Newspaper of Claremont Street  (pg 128)
  
• Genre:   novella
• Published: 1981
  
• Monthly plan
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• @bookishbeck

 

Quick Scan:

1. The story is about a woman (“Weekly”)
2. who works cleaning houses for people
3. ..but who has a life long wish.
4. Strong point: tension
   
5. Ms Jolley creates tension in the story because the reader
6. …WANTS to know what the wish is!
7. Strong point: relatable character
8. The major character Margarite Morris is relatable.
9. Ms Jolley creates  vulnerability in her  character by 
10. …giving her a burning desire for something.
11. Will this desire overcome “Weekly” and
12. …drive her to extremes…to a disaster?
13. Strong point: structure
14. Ms Morris’s life revolves.
15. The story is not in chronological order.
16. Just like many women…while busy cleaning house your thoughts drift
17. off and “Weekly” revisits her  family situation,
18. siblings, and her clients
19. …on Claremont Street.

 

Conclusion:

1. I enjoyed the wit and life lessons Ms Jolley revealed in Margarite.
2. She is lonely and emotionally alienated from their surroundings.
3. Margarite lives in an imaginatively friendlier world
4. ….saving her money for her big wish.
5. Ms Jolley also describes how
6. “She is trapped.”
7. She was overcome by the unfairness in the world.” (pg 154)
8. The reader is waiting for the moment when “Weekly”
9. …will break the unchangeable pattern that is her life.
10. This novella really packs a lot into a short space.
11. It is dense enough to allow the reader to
12. fully inhabit another world,
13. …but short enough to be read in one sitting.
14. What’s not to love?
15. #MustRead