Lots of Trumping! (Two Women - Martina Cole)

Member Name: TigerTiger

Product:	Two Women - Martina Cole
Date:	17/06/02 (1399 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of grit and action, Great characterisation; people you love and hate!

Disadvantages: Not for those with a weak stomach

~~ The author~~

Martina Cole is never one to skirt around the difficult issues in society, and as such has gained herself a reputation as the “queen of grit” when it comes down to writing books. She deals with prostitution, pimping, violence, abuse, incest, death and poverty, yet the one common link between all her novels is the presence of strong female characters. She deals with women who go through all kinds of adversity, yet manage to cope with it and come out the other side stronger as a result. She creates remarkable female characters, whilst generally making men out to be the weak inferior ones who fail in the end. I appreciate that this sounds like the feminist in me coming out. However I like to read about strong women, and don’t see the shame in this. I will be honest though and admit that I am not sure if men will appreciate Martina Cole’s novels.

Two of Martina Cole’s novels, “Dangerous Lady” and “The Jump” have gone on to be made into successful TV dramas. I discovered her books about 5 years ago now, and I look forward to my yearly installment of true grit. “Two Women” came out in 1999 and definitely lived up to the standard of her previous books.

~~The Plot~~

Susan McNamara never really stood a chance in life and now in her late twenties she has four children and is lying in a prison cell facing life imprisonment after repeatedly smashing her husband's skull with a hammer. Will blood always out? Or are there more sinister reasons for Sue's extreme actions?

Born into a violent East End family Sue McNamara's childhood consisted of beatings, brutality and towards the end incest. Her father Joey was a feared brute who made his money collecting debts and then when he came home he beat his wife and raped his daughter. Her mother was known as the local tart and often she was sleeping with some other guy in the neighborhood. She
had lead a difficult life and she was incapable of showing people any affection, including her daughters. In particular though, she failed to get close to her daughter Sue, favouring her other daughter Debbie instead.

Sue wasn’t the best looking of girls and didn’t have the best of figures and so she grew up lacking in confidence, and her home situation just made matters worse. She was bright, but had little encouragement and her life simply consisted of violence, poverty and abuse.

At 15 Sue met Barry at school and he was to change her whole life (in more ways than even she expected). Barry was the cool kid at school who craved nothing more than power and status in society. Barry was well aware who Sue’s father was and so he saw her as a way of achieving power. Sue however, was so flattered by his attentions she failed to see his ulterior motivations.

Sue and Barry married and between them they had 4 children. However, the marriage was nothing short of a nightmare for Sue as she suffered repeated beatings and Barry even managed to infect her with a sexually transmitted disease on their wedding night which resulted in their baby being still born. As time goes on she watches Barry turn into her father and she starts to fear for her children’s safety. This is one of the interesting things in the book, it shows how history does indeed repeat itself and how however hard we try we cannot forget our pasts. So, when we meet Sue and she is lying in this prison cell accused of murdering Barry with a hammer, considering her background few people are surprised that this could have happened. Surely blood will always out.

As the title suggested the book is about “2 women”. This is my only criticism of the book, as this seems to have been a last minute ad on thought to the book. I would say that more than 3 quarters of the book focuses on Susan and her life, and then all of a sudden when she is in prison
towards the end we meet the other women Matty Enderby who it can be said has had the opposite life to Sue. She came from a good home and married a wealthy kind man who she also killed. However, because of her background people are more inclined to believe that her husband was a brute and that she was provoked into killing him. Although I don’t think we hear enough about the other woman, I can see the point in her presence. We have two women from 2 different backgrounds both in prison sharing a cell for murdering their husbands. As it turns out there is more to Matty than first meets the eye. It goes to show that our backgrounds and childhoods cannot be blamed for everything that we do.

I think that I enjoy Martina Cole’s books mainly because they are a whole world away from my daily existence. Although there were lots of things in the book which were hard to read about and everything is told as it is, it was escapism in a different sense. There is lots of violence and lots of sex (or trumping as they refer to it, which caused me some confusion initially!!), so I am warning that you may need a strong stomach to take the contents of the novel However, you don’t have to have read any of Martina Cole’s previous books to enjoy this either, which is a bonus. All her books are quite lengthy and will not be a quick read, but I always finish them glad that I have taken the time to read them.

“Two Women” costs £6.99 and is available at all good bookstores!
8 out of 10.

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