Up The Junction

The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos, think about new frocks on H.P., drink tea in the cafe, and talk about their boyfriends. In these uninhibited, spirited vignettes of young women's lives in the shabby parts of South London in the sixties, money is scarce and enjoyment to be grabbed while it can.

Her art is ignited by voice, especially by voice more usually given no societal, literary or aesthetic power or space but whose authority, as you hear it, is unquestionable -- Ali Smith Guardian
What's striking at this distance is not so much Dunn's frank depiction of female promiscuity - which caused quite a stir at the time - but her distinctive, pared-down style -- David Evans Independent
Unflinching look at the lives of working-class women, presented without any moralising or judgment, and caused a sensation -- Constance Craig Smith Daily Mail
The random violence, the short-lived pleasures, the restlessness, the hopelessness, it's all caught here in a series of casual impressions which could not be more insistent Kirkus Reviews

Nell Dunn was born in 1936 and educated at a convent, which she left at the age of fourteen. She shot to fame with POOR COW (1967) and UP THE JUNCTION (1963), both of which became successful films. UP THE JUNCTION won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize.

'We stand, the three of us, me, Sylvie and Rube, pressed up against the saloon door, brown ales clutched in our hands. Rube, neck stiff so as not to shake her beehive, stares sultrily round the packed pub.' The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week, and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos. In these uninhibited, spirited vignettes of young women's lives in South London in the sixties, money is scarce and enjoyment to be grabbed while it can. Nell Dunn shot to fame with Up the Junction (1963) and Poor Cow (1967), both of which became successful films. Up the Junction won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos, think about new frocks on H.P., drink tea in the cafe, and talk about their boyfriends. In these uninhibited, spirited vignettes of young women's lives in the shabby parts of South London in the sixties, money is scarce and enjoyment to be grabbed while it can.

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