Sweet Thames - Softcover

Kneale, Matthew

3.46

495 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140296638 ISBN 13: 9780140296631

Publisher: Penguin, 2001

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London, 1849. As an epidemic of cholera draws nearer to the capital Joshua Jeavons, engineer, is working on his great drain plan for the capital. When the deaths begin, he works even more furiously, driven by the bold vision of a London freed of rotting sewers, cleansed and reborn. Then his beautiful young wife Isobella suddenly disappears and Jeavons must turn his attention to new and even more perplexing matters. His search for the answers to the mysteries that surround him leads to glittering Haymarket cafes and to London's murky underworld. What he finds there, amid poverty, disease and death, will shatter his ideals and strike at the core of everything he has ever held dear.

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Review:

Absolutely riveting * Daily Mail * Engrossing * Sunday Telegraph, PRAISE FOR MATHEW KNEALE * Every page fizzes with linguistic invention * Guardian PRAISE FOR MATHEW KNEALE * Big, brave and brilliant * Economist, PRAISE FOR MATTHEW KNEALE *

Synopsis:

London in the summer of 1849. With a deadly cholera epidemic threatening, young engineer Joshua Jeavons is convinced it is his mission to save the capital and reform its festering sewers. Meanwhile in his dometsic life he is troubled by the baffling coldness shown towards him by his beautiful bride, Isobella. As he struggles to win her round, he works feverishly on a revolutionary drainage plan. This is his dream, his dazzling vision of the future: a London free of effluent. Then a sudden and mystifying disappearance throws his whole life upside-down. He is forced to embark on a harrowing search, which plucks him from his respectable life and throws him into a London previously unknown to him. A netherworld of slum-dwellers, pickpockets and scavengers of the sewers. He will find it is this very world that holds unexpected answers to the mysteries that surround him.

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