East End tale

Press, 8 May 1982, Page 16

East End tale

Nelly Kelly. By Lena Kennedy. Macdonald, 1981. 277 pp. $21.95. Lena Kennedy was born in the East End of London 67 years ago. She left school at the age of 13, but continued to “scribble stories” all her life. In 1979 her first novel “Maggie” received excellent reviews and evidently encouraged by this, she produced “Autumn Alley” the following year. Both these novels were set in London’s East End and told a family saga of trials and adventures. Her third book, “Nelly Kelly," covers exactly the same ground. It tells the story of Nelly, leaving school after her mother’s death to. work in a sweatshop, keep house for her father, and bring up her younger brother and sister. Through all her struggles for a decent life, her marriage, the war, a sad romance, a lost baby, she keeps her dream of writing a book one day. An auto-biographical element is not a sure recipe for a successful novel but in this case it at least provides a realistic foundation. The book captures the feeling and atmosphere of the East End during World War II and despite, or perhaps because of, the plainness of the writing, there is a gritty authenticity about the narrative. “Nelly Kelly” has no great literary value; it is written very simply, the dialogue is rather stilted and the pace of the narrative sometimes flags, but it gives a truthful picture of one representative family in an era now past. — Margaret Quigley.