The Whirlpool

'Marriage rarely means happiness, either for man or woman; if it be not too grievous to be borne, one must thank the fates and take courage'. The greatest of English realist novelists, famous for New Grub Street , George Gissing creates in The Whirlpool an astonish picture of characters caught in the vortex of London, struggling to understand how they can make sense of their lives in a society of remorseless faithlessness and social snobbery. A whole era is magnificently brought to life in all its glamour and squalor - and at the book's heart lies one of the most remarkable figures in English literature: Alma Rolfe, torn between an idyll of rural domesticity and her career in London as a musician.