num_pages: 208
description: On the seventh floor of an East End high-rise, Birdie Gibbs lives on chocolate bars and yearns for action, or at least for the reopening of the old Imperial dance hall, where she used to have good times. One of her ex-husbands, Jimmy Dwyer, turns up from nowhere with a greyhound that needs a temporary home, then disappears again. Seeing Jimmy revives memories of the War, when Birdie and her friends did their bit. She still does her bit today, though the world around her doesn't make much sense.When the Fruit Bowl Estate boils over in the summer of '95 and police leave is cancelled, Birdie gets all the action she can handle. More even than the night Hitler bombed Beckton gas works.
language: English
title: Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights
titlecomplete: Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights
genres: Fiction
ratings_count: 151
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist
publisher: Black Swan