The L-Shaped Room insults her to the extent that Jane determines to have the child. She and Toby (Bell) start a romance, which is disrupted when he learns that she is pregnant by a previous suitor. They try to work things out, but he is also unhappy with his lack of income or success as a writer. Jane befriends the other residents and they help her when she goes into labour. Toby visits her in the hospital and gives her a copy of his new book, called "The L-Shaped Room". After leaving the hospital, Jane journeys home to her parents in France, saying
Debut novel writers without established legacies. In the same piece for the "Times," Ayana Mathis describes the debut novel as a "a piece of the writer’s soul in a way that subsequent books can’t ever be", because the novel is necessarily a work of passion and a product of all of their life before that moment. Often an author's first novel will not be as complex stylistically or thematically as subsequent works and often will not feature the author's typical literary characteristics. "Huffington Post"'s Dave Astor attributes these to two forces: first that authors are still learning their own unique style and