Lead Review (Bethnal Green)

• Book: Bethnal Green
• Location: Bethnal Green, London, Penang
• Author: Amélie Skoda

Review Author: tripfiction

3.75*

Bethnal Green by Amélie Skoda, novel set in 1970s East London and Penang.

1970s: Suyin is offered the chance to leave Penang, where she is working as a seamstress, and widen her horizons by training as a nurse at the Bethnal Green Hospital. She is following in the footsteps of her sister, who departed a year ago, only to return unexpectedly shortly before Suyin’s departure, a shadow of her former self. She was based at Dulwich Hospital, which really took me back in time because that was my local hospital when I was a child.

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The author beautifully configures the London of the 1970s, with Charrington’s Pubs and graffiti relevant to the era. An inevitable greyness in the weather assaults her (she has to deal with ‘cold and dread‘, observing the ‘gloom, these slum streets‘), all such a contrast to her country of origin. The author captures that real sense of being dropped in a new country, where everything feels so different and alien, and she paints a really cold and wet East London, which is of course a huge contrast to Malaysia. There are new people to meet, hierarchies and dynamics to fathom, friendships to be made, learning to be had, exams to sit, essentially she has to create a new life for herself.

She finds a slip of paper in her sister’s London A to Z (remember those?), which she has brought along and she understands that something must have happened during her sister’s time in the capital, something so significant that it drove her to return to the safety of her home in Malaysia – and a much diminished person.

She manages to leave behind the family dynamics for the duration of her stay but several years later returns home to face considerable change. The self confidence that she has built whilst in London serves her well as she forges a new life.

This is an easy to read novel that is poignant and nicely thought through. It perhaps lacks a little character depth, which would have raised the storyline to the next level but is good on era and setting  and at times really quite poignant and heart-rending. “It is also a powerful love letter to dedicated NHS workers from around the world, whose work touches countless lives every day”.

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