Iris

Upstairs, Downstairs creator Marsh compassionately depicts a stark postwar London through the eyes of 17-year-old ""tart"" Iris Winston, who shares with her pre-Beatles motherland a dangerous blend of innocence, na vet and a kind of willful refusal to see things for what they are. Iris convinces herself she isn't really a prostitute, though she regularly accepts cab fare, dinner and small gifts in exchange for providing predatory men with sexual favors, as when she talks dirty to an MP over lunch. Her lifestyle, insouciant but rife with danger and humiliations, centers on hip clubs and expensive restaurants, in stark contrast to the gloomy family flat she returns to every night. The virginal, childlike Iris seems oblivious to what others think of her, but in one afternoon, everything changes. Five upper-class men with whom she had been sharing a midday drink take her to an apartment and gang-rape her. Iris keeps this brutal awakening secret as she continues to live party to party and pound to pound, wary of the city's underworld but finding a dubious security among gay friends and Mafia families. Marsh's measured plot takes a sharp turn when Iris becomes a stand-in for a famous actress and marries Peter, a sympathetic restaurateur. Thirteen years later, in 1965, their marriage is on the rocks. Peter leaves for New York while Iris runs their restaurant/club, where she encounters Michael, the brother of one of her rapists. Though Iris can trust Michael, the secret surfaces and she uses her organized crime connections to protect her reputation. The two disparate parts of Marsh's story are held together only tenuously, however, and elements meant to link the two, such as the London-New York mob subplots, seem contrived. Actress and novelist Marsh does, however, paint an affecting portrait of Iris's loss of innocence, backgrounded by sharp and vivid societal detail. (July)