a b Crowther, Bosley (28 May 1963). "Screen: 'L-Shaped Room':Leslie Caron Grows Up in Harsh Story". The New York Times.

In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote "[Leslie Caron] pours into this role so much powerful feeling, so much heart and understanding, that she imbues a basically threadbare little story with tremendous compassion and charm.The credit, however, is not all Miss Caron's. She must share it with an excellent cast, including Tom Bell, a new actor who plays the writer on a par with her. Particularly she must share it with the remarkable young director Bryan Forbes, who also wrote the screenplay from a novel by Lynne Reid Banks. Mr Forbes is a sometime actor whose first directorial job was last year's beautiful and sensitive Whistle Down the Wind. In this little picture, he has achieved much the same human quality, with shadings of spiritual devotion, as in that." [6] Awards [ edit ] The feelings of dread and dislocation stirred by the initial observations of the book’s narrator, twenty-seven-year-old Jane Graham, are heightened by the mentions of these working girls and the memory of Doris’s gaze resting on her waistband as she shows her the crudely partitioned room of the title. Jane is in a position that no unattached career girl would want to find herself in as the Sixties began. Seven years before abortion was made legal and a year before the pill first arrived in Britain, she is one month pregnant. On the credit side, Jane does grow somewhat as a person as the story progresses; I found myself wondering if the author made Jane’s inner voice so critical and offensive to highlight how far she had to travel to approach a more tolerant and accepting point-of-view. She hassn’t quite gotten there by the end of the novel, though. Perhaps she progresses more in the next two books of the trilogy? This book exudes the feel of the early sixties, and is surprisingly honest about taboo subjects at the time - single mothers, prostitution, abortion, racism, and homosexuality. Jane is in her late twenties and pregnant after an unhappy consummation of a previous romance during her acting career. She finds herself in the L-Shaped Room because it is cheap and dirty, far from everyone she knows and hopes to meet no-one, save some money and escape from the world. Instead, the inhabitants of the house find their way to her room, and often into her heart over the course of the pregnancy. During this time she struggles to come to terms with who she is and what she wants and also with what she wants from the relationship with her father, who demanded she leave home after she informs him of her condition. Throughout the book, Jane's life twists and turns, never seeming to take the path you expect, but it is a wonderful journey of self-discovery. The medical aspects of the pregnancy are as remote forty years on as the social alienation she experiences - there is never a question of her not smoking or drinking during the pregnancy, nor any medical advice to stop. Modern mothers will shake their heads in disbelief but that's how it was. The reality was also that the L-Shaped Room was probably one of the few places she could have gone to without being asked to leave as soon as her pregnancy showed. The other Jane in the house is a friendly prostitute who occupies the basement.Lynne Reid Banks is a British author of books for children and adults. She has written forty books, including the best-selling children's novel The Indian in the Cupboard, which has sold over 10 million copies and been made into a film. Frank’s café, on the corner of Westbourne Park Road and Powis Terrace, is now The Mutz Nutz, a dressing-up outlet for dogs. Nothing could illustrate just how much the area has changed than the arrival of this, and its sister Dog Deli and Spa, on Powis Gardens. Toby would have a lot to get angry about if he was still around – not least the fact he could no longer afford to slum it in Ladbroke Grove. which tells the story of a young woman, unmarried and pregnant, who moves into a London boarding house, befriending a young man in the building. It was adapted into a film, with significant differences from the novel, by Bryan Forbes. One of my highlights from last year’s reading was participating in a Jean Rhys reading week. So when I saw that Waterstones Gower Street is doing a ‘Forgotten Fiction’ reading group where they’ll be discussing Jean Rhys’ “Voyage in the Dark” as well as Lynne Reid Banks’ seminal book first published in 1960, I jumped at the chance to read this classic novel for the first time. Before I even started reading I felt a big bout of nostalgia as I realized Reid Banks also wrote one of my favourite children’s books “The Indian in the Cupboard.” This imaginative drama takes place in a child’s bedroom where he can bring his toys to life and I connected with it so strongly when I was young. It’s interesting to now read Reid Banks’ gritty realist novel that represents the experience of being a single young woman whose father has thrown her out of their home for being pregnant. The novel incisively portrays the social prejudices the heroine Jane faces and the internalized shame she feels as a consequence, but also how her strength of will helps her endure and establish a new life for herself. This is a mixed bag of a story. It's good. It tells an important & interesting story. But it's a story of its time (late 1950s) with racism, prejudices and phobias.

Lynne Reid Banks was one of the first female news-reporters at ITN. Although she complained she was always given 'soft stories' she did not consider herself a feminist at the time, which is ironic, as the L-Shaped Room is considered as a feminist novel.Now that you are aware of the problems with the room, the next step is to find some solutions! But first it’s worth considering the function of your room.

Though I appreciate that there is some very fine writing in this story, and that it was much more forthright about taboo subjects than others of its era (first sexual encounters, the morality and reality of abortion, unwed motherhood, the physical rigours of pregnancy, sexual and racial prejudice, among others), I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed my reading of it. Now you’re going to ask me if I hate all men. Well I don’t. You can’t hate what you don’t respect. I’m sorry for them – I don’t suppose you believe that, but it’s true… You probably think my life’s some kind of tragedy, but I’ll tell you – one of the hardest parts of it’s keeping a straight face.” didn't seem to be anything else I ought to do so I sat in the arm-chair and stared out of the window. The l-shaped room. A dingey, grubby, awkward space in a run down boarding house. Jane could have afforded something better – she had savings, she still had her job – but she chose not to. Perhaps some of my reluctance to fully embrace this story has something to do with the style of the writing, often very much “statement of fact”; almost wooden at times. But mostly I just did not find Jane as worthy of sincere interest and affection as I would have liked; this sort of story, to work for me, has to have a much more deserving-of-my-regard protagonist. I often felt that the fictional Jane created many of her own problems, then moped about stewing in her resultant misery, before being bailed out by various strangely willing “white knights”– her supervisor James, Toby and John, her father (who almost immediately after telling her to leave writes begging her to return), and, most improbably of all, her eccentric Aunt Addy, who appears out of the blue, after never being previously mentioned, offering succour at the most opportune moment.Something that I did notice from the outset was the racism present, and this occurred throughout the book. There were also some casual references to being Jewish, and gay, which I thought were quite unnecessary, regardless of the time period this was set it. The racism especially was raging here. This read is in the first person, Jane who is just under 30 but who still acts like a teenager, seemingly unable to make clear decisions regarding her life.

Lynne Reid Banks, born in 1929, and part of the post-war wave of newly “liberated” women entering the professional workplace in droves, initially pursued a career as a stage actress, then as a television journalist, and, following a demotion, as a television scriptwriter. She took revenge by writing the first draft of this novel “on a company typewriter, on a company paper, on company time.” However, if one reads this as a book of its time, this is a warm, heartfelt story of growth, including getting beyond racial slurs, class distinctions and the stigma of being an unwed mother. I agree with Paul Bryant, it was often awkward and unnerving. I didn't know that the 50-ties in the UK had prejudices still 'flowing in the veins'. I am tempted to quote some ridiculous opinions about homosexuality or Jews (or people with darker skin), just to show you their absurdity, but it is better to bury them. By the way, mentioned Paul Bryant wrote that (50 years after the novel was first published) Lynne Reid Banks said she is ashamed of those times/people today. them. I'm just not. it's like with doing up the room. Once you get started there's no end to it. They get friendly and soon they find out all about you, and your life's not your own any That said, the area in which the market resides, between Lillie Road and Walham Grove Road, near Fulham Broadway tube, still has echoes of the grotty old place. Pound shops, pawnbrokers and dubious fast food outlets abound – and while some of the windows may be made of UPVC these days, they retain their sinister regard.Jane doesn’t intend to mix with the other residents of the boarding house, but they are curious about her and in time she is drawn out of the shell she constructed for herself. Over a comforting cup of coffee, Jane reflects on her predicament, and a life that has similarities with the author’s own. Born in London in 1929, Lynne Reid Banks was evacuated to Canada during the Second World War, returning as a teenager in 1945 to train and then work as an actress. Jane’s recollections of pre-Equity survival in rep, living off tinned spaghetti in dreary northern towns, ring with the authenticity of autobiography. she used to say God thought it up as a joke, and when he found people taking it serious instead of laughing, he was so put out he made it a sin.' Oh, I've met them,' she said. 'You can't help it. That John. He looks after me like he was my mother or