The L-Shaped Room Book Report

INTRODUCTION

My mother had already read this book and she recommended it to me.As we have a similar taste in books, I thought I should give it a try.The book is called:“The L-shaped room” because the main character, Jane, lives in a small L-shaped room.The room stands for a chapter in her life, it reflects her mood.When she is happy, she starts fixing up the room.When she is sad, she doesn’t really care about it. Jane get’s really attached to the L-shaped room. She has to move out, because the room is too small for herself and her baby. Leaving the room also stands for a new chapter in her life.

This book can be classified into multiple genres. In the story, the main character falls in love several times, that’s why it is a romantic novel.

Jane, the main character, gets pregnant without being married.When she tells her father about this, he kicks her out of the house and she has to move into a small, inexpensive L- shaped room in a bad neighbourhood. She tries to keep it a secret from her environment, but later on, as she becomes friends with the residents of the other rooms in the house, they notice.

CREATIVE ASSIGNMENT

1. Describe the evolution of 1 character: look at how they change throughout the entire story, describe what made them change and discuss whether you think it’s a change for better or for worse.

The character I’m going to write about is Jane. She is the girl that gets pregnant when she meets up with an old friend of hers.

In the beginning, we read about a situation that happened seven years earlier. Jane is an actress and works with a theatre company. At the company, there is a homosexual guy named Malcolm. He falls in love with a good friend of Jane’s, but this friend is not gay, he actually is disgusted by people like Malcolm.This friend and Jane decide to let Malcolm catch them in the dressing room after a performance, while they are making out.As expected, Malcolm catches them and starts a fight with Jane. For this reason, Jane leaves the theatre company.After this experience, she feels very guilty of her actions. “I thought if he stayed I’d have to tell him we’d let him catch us purposely

I’d rather you were near me at first, If you could stand it.” (p265)

I think Jane changes for the better. She simply becomes more mature and independent. I can’t find a reason why she would change for the worse.

PERSONAL APPRECIATION

I didn’t expect a lot of the novel, but it pleasantly surprised me.To me it was interesting to read about the taboos of the 60s (homosexuality, pregnancy without being married, anti-semitism, racism, etc) and how society’s visions have changed. If this happened today, the story would have had a completely different outcome.

In the beginning of the book, I felt that there wasn’t happening a lot, but the further I got, the more I started to like it. Overall, it is quite predictable, although I had not expected that Jane would try to kill her baby and that her lover Toby (a writer who also lives in the house) would leave her. One of my favourite scenes was when Jane,Toby and Johnny are decorating the Christmas tree. It creates a pleasant atmosphere, they’re like a happy family and forget their problems for a while. The book is written really well and I enjoyed reading