Tag Archives: Patrick Hamilton

Great Opening Paragraph 116… ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the mighty congested lungs, held there for a number of hours, and then, in the evening, exhaled violently through the same channels.”
Patrick HamiltonFrom ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton

Read my reviews of THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE and HANGOVER SQUARE, both by Patrick Hamilton.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Reading Turgenev’ by William Trevor
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘The Ghost Road’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE by Patrick Hamilton via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2AD

#BookReview ‘Hangover Square’ by Patrick Hamilton #WW2 #historical

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Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton, first published in 1941, is deservedly being re-discovered as a perceptive portrayal of people getting-by, living in the low rent district of Earls Court, London, months before war is declared. It is the mournful tale of one man’s hopeless love for a woman who exploits him relentlessly, his inability to see her for what she is, and the battle of his psyche, half of which is telling him to commit murder. Patrick HamiltonGeorge Harvey Bone loves Netta Longdon despite, or perhaps because of, her disdain for him. ‘When she had finished making up, she went into the sitting room to change her shoes, and he followed her. He was always following her, like her shadow, like a dog.’ This is a novel about love, about living on the edge, and schizophrenia, and about the underbelly of a city paused on the brink of war.
The story flicks back and forth in George’s head between his lucid moments planning a new life in Maidenhead when he will stop drinking, and what happens after the ‘click’ in his head – a blackout or loss of sense of time and place – when he realizes the only solution is to kill Netta. George is put-upon by Netta and her circle of friends, he buys drinks, brings food, and they tolerate his company only when he can contribute something. Netta goes to Brighton with George, not to be with him but because she hopes he can introduce her to someone useful. George, bless him, fails to see this. ‘She was wildly, wildly, lovely that night. He looked across the table at her, and she was violets and primroses again.’ Netta and her heartless group of friends exploit George mercilessly and he allows them to do it.
Hamilton’s Earls Court is a seedy place where people get-by on little money, living in rented rooms or boarding houses, scrounging off others, seemingly without jobs to go to. Netta goes to bed in the small hours, rises at eleven in the morning with a hangover – the Hangover Square of the title – then navigates her day via pubs, bars and restaurants or drinking from a bottle of gin provided by a friend. Brighton – London-by-the-Sea – brings a breath of fresh air but, as is always the way, George’s problems follow him there. There is a lovely section when he plays golf, a successful round which gives him the confidence to woo Netta. ‘He wasn’t going to get drunk. She could drink if she wanted to, but he wasn’t going to – at least only a little. He was going to keep his head.’ The irony, of course, is that George is schizophrenic and has another psychotic episode.
This novel is very funny in places, in others the action can seem slow to progress, but I found myself willing George to tell Netta where to go. He is the sort of character you want to take by the hand. Of course, he is unable to stand up to Netta’s rude and ungrateful behaviour and it is the uncertainty of what he will do, where he will go, and whether his schizophrenic murder plans will come to fruition, which made this such an absorbing read.

Read my review of THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE, another World War Two novel by the same author, and click here to try the #FirstPara of THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elisabeth Bowen
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HANGOVER SQUARE by Patrick Hamilton http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2EQ via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton #WW2 #wartimefamily

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Patrick Hamilton is a new author for me. The Slaves of Solitude, published in 1947, is a novel about wartime in which war is deep background. The setting is Thames Lockden, a small town in the Home Counties, which Hamilton based on Henley-upon-Thames. It tells the story of Miss Roach – Enid, though hardly anyone knows this is her first name – and her life at a boarding house, The Rosamund Tea Rooms. Patrick HamiltonThis is a war novel with a difference, focussing on the people at home, not fighting but getting on with their lives in a world turned upside down, managing on a day-to-day basis, life is dreary and bare. Miss Roach, former schoolmistress, is single, 39, and fiercely independent. She has been bombed out of her London flat and has fled from the bombing. Life is dark. ‘The earth was muffled from the stars; the river and the pretty eighteenth-century bridge were muffled from the people; the people were muffled from each other. This was war late in 1943.’
Hamilton is a wonderful observer of human behaviour, he shows the nasty politeness between the residents at The Rosamund Tea Rooms, the bullying, the toadying, the power struggles and how the quiet ones are trampled over by the arrogant bullies. It is fascinating to see how the war makes things which seemed impossible before the war, possible. Miss Roach is a quiet, gentle woman, who over-thinks situations and constantly revisits things that happened and what she might have said. She is bullied at her shared dining room table by the odious Mr Thwaites who dislikes her democratic values, mistreated by ‘her’ American, the inept Lieutenant Pike, and stabbed in the back by her supposed ‘friend’ Vicki Kugelmann. Mr Thwaites is a clever portrayal of a man secure in the knowledge that he is always right and everyone else is wrong and inferior, reinforcing this position by snide comments to Miss Roach which, not wanting a confrontation, she sidesteps. The appearance in her life of the Lieutenant briefly gives Miss Roach’s confidence a boost, until she realizes that his compliments are always spoken in moments of drunkenness. She so longs to believe his protestations but is wary of his inconsequence so, when Vicki sets her sights on the Lieutenant, Miss Roach doesn’t know whether to be jealous or relieved.
Hamilton is a fine writer. He writes about the detail of everyday boring life and enlivens it with observations of human behaviour which are spot-on. The ending is satisfying and realistic.

For a taster of this novel, click here to read the first paragraph of THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE.

Read my review of HANGOVER SQUARE by the same author.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Paying Guests’ by Sarah Waters
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elisabeth Bowen

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE by Patrick Hamilton http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2AH via @SandraDanby