Lynne Reid Banks, one of my favorite English writers, died April 4 at the age of 94. She is best-known for her 1960 classic, The L-Shaped Room, about an unmarried woman who gets pregnant. The single narrator, Jane Graham, a former actress who works in PR, moves into a rooming house after she is castigated by her father for getting pregnant. The rooming house is noisy and infested with bugs. But the other roomers, some of them quite eccentric, are very kind and accept her pregnancy.
To honor Lynne Reid Banks’s memory, I am re-posting my mini-essay about one of her later novels.
The Warning Bell, by Lynne Reid Banks
Lynne Reid Bank’s 1986 novel, The Warning Bell, is almost as brilliant as The L-Shaped Room, and treats similar issues. Like Jane in The L-Shaped Room, Maggie, the heroine of The Warning Bell, Maggie, is besotted with theater, and like Jane, she gets pregnant.
The heroine, Maggie, feels guilty much of the time. Raised in Scotland by a strict father and a gentle, fearful mother, Maggie feels split: at home she is Margaret Robertson, her parents’ dull daughter, and outside she is bright Maggie, who is entertaining and takes chances. Encouraged by an impulsive English teacher, Maggie takes a big chance. She accepts her father’s money, pretending to take a domestic science course in London for two years, while she is actually going to drama school.
Being an actress is not easy. And Maggie frequently hears the voice of her alter-ego Margaret telling her to slow down and be sensible. She gets some good roles in a repertory company, but cannot find work in London. If not for her flamboyant friend, Tanya, a more talented actress, she feels she would have gone crazy. But the two argue and split up when pregnant Maggie decides to marry the man who date-raped her and emigrate to Africa.
Being a woman seems to be all about splitting selves. Reid writes about the split between career and motherhood, the split between living in Britain and Africa. The section in Africa reminds me of Doris Lessing’s A Proper Marriage–what happens when you live in a provincial town and you fail as a mother, or feel that you fail? After her husband leaves her, Maggie and her son Matt return to London, where Maggie makes some difficult decisions about careers and motherhood, some of which she regrets.
As Maggie’s mother says to her, “You know, Maggie, the vainest and most futile mental exercise in the world is tracing back some accident or blunder to its origins, and letting one’s heart gnaw itself in regret that one didn’t know what was going to result…. One’s whole life can turn on some tiny thing. It’s not fair. there ought to be a bell, a warning bell, sounding at dangerous corners. But there never, never is.”
Maggie’s mother is wise. There ought to be a warning bell. Lynne Reid Banks empathized with her women characters as they break taboos and make very human mistakes.
I didn’t know about this writer. I will check her out more. Thanks for writing about her. It will give me some food for thought for my first foray into fiction writing about a woman having a baby. It should give me a good literary perspective, a good English line into the historical context.
A great book. You’ll love it! And good luck with your writing project.
The L-Shaped Room is one of my favourites, though I hadn’t read beyond that trilogy for years- I’m expanding now! I did read this one, and loved the writing but found it hard to get past all the racism.
Yes, I THINK i vaguely remember that, but it’s been a while since I read it. Different times… she wouldn’t portray him that way now. I would really like to keep reading more of her books when I find the time.