A tense thriller of child abduction set in LONDON
Novel set in PECKHAM, South-East London
3rd January 2024
The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott, novel set in Peckham, South-East London.
One building, three time periods: 1843, 1994 and 2008, with the changing vistas of Peckham forming a colourful backdrop. I was particularly interested in picking up this novel because I grew up very near to Peckham, in fact, Rye Lane was our go-to high street. As a child I went to Jones and Higgins, the department store which was built in 1867 and was just one building in the Golden Mile, which at that time rivalled Oxford Street. It closed its doors in 1980. Shoe shopping as a child was always a highlight because in those days you could get your feet measured and get an X-Ray of the bones in your foot (that was REALLY a thing).
There are copious mentions of The King’s Head, a pub, which in this story is portrayed as a rough joint. I only know that it was a heart-sink moment if the 63 bus from King’s X terminated there because I lived beyond it on that route. And hanging around that area was to be avoided at all costs.
There is a great sense of the River Peck which in the Victorian era was used as a dumping point for sewage, causing a miasma in the hotter months which afflicted Horatio and his family, who lived in the house at that point. The tenants in 1994 and then the owners in 2008 both researched the context of the house in which they lived, throwing up more interesting information that contributes to the storyline.
Peckham has seen such changing fortunes. It was an easy place to shop and find exotic foods; the travelling fun fair that arrived on Peckham Rye each year was often beset by violence; and whatever became of the Lido, housed behind great fencing units that crumbled as the years passed? In 1985 there were riots and again in 2011, and in 1989 a visit to the local Marks & Spencer involved cash transactions with a cashier behind a solid grille for protection. Much has changed as the intrinsically mundane suburb, with a wonderful variety of solid housing vernacular, has inevitably become gentrified.
The story is as much about the building – groaning and creaking with a hint of menace throughout – as the people who inhabit it. Tragedy and crime are almost embedded within the timbers of the dwelling from suspicious deaths in 1843 and 1994, to a couple trying to find a way forward to finance the much needed renovations, but Seb has been involved in demise of Lehman Brothers and is actively pulling the wool over Maxine’s eyes…
This is a well written novel, that moves easily between the different storylines.
If you enjoy this novel then you might want to see the film Rye Lane which is a good natured and sharp film set in the area; and of course Only Fools and Horses is set there. So it is a residential area that quietly gets the limelight, perhaps in sharp contrast to its more flamboyant north London counterparts.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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