[ACG]⋙ PDF Fred and Edie Jill Dawson 9780340751671 Books

Fred and Edie Jill Dawson 9780340751671 Books

Download As PDF : Fred and Edie Jill Dawson 9780340751671 Books

Fred and Edie Jill Dawson 9780340751671 Books

Fred & Edie, a finalist for both the Whitbread Award and the Orange Prize, deserves evry accolade it receives...and more! This novel tells the story of Edith Thompson and her young lover, Frederick Bywaters, who were arrested convicted, and executed for the murder of Edith's husband, Percy. Jill Dawson skillfully mixes fact and fiction, including letters from the prisoners and newspaper articles, to keep the reader mesmerized throughout.

London as it must have been in the 1920s comes alive. We see, through the author's character development and attention to detail, how a woman was treated in marriage, in the court system, and in newspapers with their lurid headlines calculated to sell the most possible copies. "Poison Detected" is one headline; "Mrs. Thompson in Tears" is another. It is not expected that one feel sympathy for Edie (after all, an unrepentant murderess) but she is a beautifully drawn, complex, perplexing, and utterly unforgettable character.

The supporting characters, especially Edie's younger sister Avis, and the prison chaplin, Piper, are equally interesting and add much to the story. Be sure to read Edie's last letter to Avis, in one sense also a victim, but likewise a survivor in her own right. The afterword also offers pertinent information on some of the people involved with the real-life case, and other sources for further reading.

Fred and Edie is a book that you will want to return to again and again.


Tags : Fred and Edie [Jill Dawson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In December 1922 Edith Thompson, a smart, bright, lower-middle class woman who worked in a milliner's shop,Jill Dawson,Fred and Edie,Sceptre,0340751673,Fiction,Great Britain,Trials (Murder),Crime & mystery,Crime & mystery fiction,Crime, Thriller & Adventure,Fiction General,Modern & contemporary fiction,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Modern fiction

Fred and Edie Jill Dawson 9780340751671 Books Reviews

Pretty good true story about a late-thirties well-to-do english woman who is married to a not-so-perfect man and finds herself a lover (younger sister's boyfriend). It all ends in tragedy with three out of the four people involved in these couples winds up dead.
I really enjoyed reading this true crime novel by Jill Dawson. I'm not normally into true crime, but this one was written so much like a novel that you almost forget that it isn't fiction. Plus the historical London setting always puts a nice, atmospheric spin on everything. I highly recommend this book.
Fred & Edie tells the true story of a man, Percy Thompson, who is killed after walking home from the theatre with his wife, Edie. Shortly thereafter, Edie and her lover, Fred Bywaters, are arrested for his murder. Most of the novel is made up of letters from Edie to Fred, written from her jail cell during the trial. However, the flashbacks of how Edie met Fred, as well as her tumultuous marriage to Percy, are what make this novel more than just a newspaper headline.
For fans of historical fiction, true crime, stories about scandalous affairs, and lovers of all things British - this novel is for you! It took a bit to get used to the letters/newsclipping writing style, but once it got rolling, I didn't want to put it down. I can't wait for what's next from a new favorite author, Jill Dawson.
I couldn't put this novel down; it followed Edith Thompson through her 3 months in jail accused of involvement in her husband's murder. In letters to her younger lover-and accomplice -Frederick Bywaters, Dawson recreates their relationship and the romantic yearnings of a woman stifled in an unhappy marriage.
From early certainty that she will get off to an increasing and horrific awareness that death awaits them both
'When I remember the summer we spent in Shanklin I picture that photograph we had taken on the beach, all four of us. Percy sucking on his pipe and Freddy squinting into the sun and me without a hat and you, you broad-brimmed and healthy, clutching at your white gloves. I try to keep from thinking this, but the thought won't stay away. That a year from now, of the four of us, only you will be able to look at that photograph again.'
Incidentally, just as good, if not better, is F. Tennyson Jesse's novel 'A Pin to see the Peepshow' which covers the same case.
Building this book on the skeleton of Edith Thompson's letters to her lover, Jill Dawson has presented us with the thoughts and feelings of Edith as she waits in Holloway after her arrest for supposedly inciting her lover to murder her husband. Her greatest misfortune was to be born at the wrong time nowadays a trial for murder would not involve value judgements about the accused's adultery, abortion or passionate letters to her paramour. But it is these which really condemned her in the eyes of the judge, jury and popular press.

Unlike F. Tennyson Jesse's "A Pin to See the Peepshow", this account does not deal with her early, unhappy childhood but still makes it clear that she married Percy because that was the only escape route she could see from a miserable and narrow home-life. That Percy turned out to be the last person a highly strung, fantasy loving and passionate woman should have married was the second blow dealt her by an unkind fate. The third was to allow her develop an unrealistic relationship with a much younger man who took her outbursts of fantasy literally and was also wound up to breaking point by her coded references to her husband's brutalities. Divorce, of course, was not a feasible option for the respectable middle-classes.

By using an epistolary style, Jill Dawson allows us to see all the action vividly through the eyes of her protagonist but it does leave the other characters slightly in the shadow.
great if you love historical fiction, or just a good love story. this book was recommended by a friend who said it was her favorite- I can see why!
Fred & Edie, a finalist for both the Whitbread Award and the Orange Prize, deserves evry accolade it receives...and more! This novel tells the story of Edith Thompson and her young lover, Frederick Bywaters, who were arrested convicted, and executed for the murder of Edith's husband, Percy. Jill Dawson skillfully mixes fact and fiction, including letters from the prisoners and newspaper articles, to keep the reader mesmerized throughout.

London as it must have been in the 1920s comes alive. We see, through the author's character development and attention to detail, how a woman was treated in marriage, in the court system, and in newspapers with their lurid headlines calculated to sell the most possible copies. "Poison Detected" is one headline; "Mrs. Thompson in Tears" is another. It is not expected that one feel sympathy for Edie (after all, an unrepentant murderess) but she is a beautifully drawn, complex, perplexing, and utterly unforgettable character.

The supporting characters, especially Edie's younger sister Avis, and the prison chaplin, Piper, are equally interesting and add much to the story. Be sure to read Edie's last letter to Avis, in one sense also a victim, but likewise a survivor in her own right. The afterword also offers pertinent information on some of the people involved with the real-life case, and other sources for further reading.

Fred and Edie is a book that you will want to return to again and again.