Vivid bawdy & bitter' (The Times) Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street young & old meeting the harsh challeges of poverty & survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly at eleven neglected & independent dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah knocking on sixty & still on the game; Joanne not yet twenty not yet married & already pregnant; Old Alice welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husb&. & linking them all watching over them all mother to half the street is fiery indomitable Iris.