Union Street and Blow Your House Down: Two Novels

Union Street Pat Barkers first novel concerns seven neighboring women near a factory in northeast England. Life for these women is trying: some of them are married to alcoholics some are victims of abuse; one is old and near death another is still a child but has the experience of an adult; all are struggling to survive. First published in 1982 it was made into the film Stanley & Iris by MGM in 1989 starring Robert DeNiro and Jane Fonda . Blow Your House Down Barkers second novel also portrays the lives of women in industrial England--but these women are prostitutes living in a northern England city that is stalked by a vicious Jack the Ripper-style serial killer who is singling out women with nowhere else to go.