Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem - Review

This was the September choice for my book club, and it wasn't something I would have ever picked up but as always I will give it a go. It took me forever to read which really annoyed me, especially as it's not even that long of a book! But I persevered and we did have a good discussion about it at book club. 

Mudlarking is the act of scavenging stuff that turns up in the muddy banks of a river shore when the tide goes out. It mostly refers to the River Thames in London, which is tidal, and where in the 18th century poor people and their children scavenged for goods that they could resell and make a tiny living from. These days, anyone can go and search for stuff on the muddy banks, and Lara is one of those people. She did explain the difference between people who just search stuff that lays on the foreshore and those who actually go digging for stuff - which is illegal unless you're a member of the mudlarking society, apparently, which Lara is not so she was a bit scathing about it. 

Let me talk about the parts of the book that I found interesting: the history of London and how it shows up in what artefacts she founds - Roman pottery, Victorian pins, loads of other bits. Lara has to turn over all her finds to the Museum of London because they have first refusal on what's been found, which was also interesting. She talked about finding rings and jewellery and precious gems, and she throws back some of the engraved rings she finds as she just finds them too sad. There was an interesting part about a bag of garnets that fell off a ship or were nicked, and apparently it's quite easy to find them. I also found the parts about how climate change is changing the edges of the river and so on. So those bits were good.

But a lot of it was quite repetitive and some of the others in my book club said that too. There was way too much about the steps going down to the banks and just choosing different places to go and why, blah blah blah. Also a lot of her finds seems really similar which was annoying. Plus I found the ending quite odd, where she goes to one of the most easterly points where the river is more of a sea, and nearly gets caught by the tide. I just didn't really care enough about it. 

In all i'm giving this three out of five. There's a sequel but I don't think I'll bother!