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grubstlodger's review against another edition
5.0
I gulped this book down at a great lick, probably not digesting it fully but finding it too tasty to stop.
I’d enjoyed ‘Twenty-thousand Streets Under the Sky’ far more than I had expected and bought as much Patrick Hamilton as I could afford and knew I wanted to read one after I’d tackled ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’. I was expecting that book to be his most famous, ‘Hangover Square’ but the first page of this was too gripping.
London has been compared to a great monster many times before. Usually it is a voracious eater, plundering the local countryside and resources but this book described it’s main function as respiration. It breathes in people from the surroundings and at the end of the day breathes them out, following bus and train lines like oxygen in the bloodstream. It was striking. It was sombre. It was utterly gripping.
It is narrated by Miss Roach (nearly all the people in this are Mr, Mrs and Miss). She is a spinster, approaching forty with a failed teaching career and a minor job in publishing. It’s 1943 and she’s been bombed out of the city and lives in a dreary converted tearooms in a lightly fictionalised version of Henley on Thames. These lodgings are ruled over by the odious Mr Thwaites so she escapes for coffee visits with her friend Vicki, a german ex-pat who wants to live in the same building; and Lieutenant Lummis, an American who is taking advantage of being away from home.
It seems strange that this is the third novel (of the four I have read) narrated by a woman. Especially strange considering a lot of his work seems to have a deeply ambivalent attitude to women and he is so good at creating female monsters. Roach, for all her quiet unexcitingness, is a character who is easy to warm to. Part of this is due to the reader siding with her against the nasty characters.
Mr Thwaites is a total bully. His main abuse is against the English language. He often lapses into a jokey 'olde-English' manner of talking when he is in a good mood. The protagonist describes this as 'trothing' and she (and we) find it excruciatingly embarrassing and irritating. For example, he describes a pretty woman by saying “The damsel doth not offend the organs of optical vision.” He constantly torments Roach in subtle ways and makes life at the house about him. He was the very best depiction of an over-opinionated bore I have ever read.
The main plot of the book concerns Roach and Lummis and their strange kind of relationship. He once asked her to marry him but has never brought it up since. Mainly he spends his time away somewhere or drunk. The other is about Vicki, a German who seemed very nice at first but becomes Roach’s archenemy/ arch-frenemy, especially in her attempts to muscle in on Lummis. Roach has to realise she doesn’t really care for Lummis, isn’t threatened by Vicki and can overcome Thwaites in order to relinquish her slavery, go back to London and start to live again.
That said, it’s not really about plot, it’s about mood and tone. There’s a dry dinginess to the whole thing that is really resonating with the time of year. I frequently laughed at this book, especially when Thwaites was at his most awful and I was liberated and delighted by the ending.
Very good stuff.
I’d enjoyed ‘Twenty-thousand Streets Under the Sky’ far more than I had expected and bought as much Patrick Hamilton as I could afford and knew I wanted to read one after I’d tackled ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’. I was expecting that book to be his most famous, ‘Hangover Square’ but the first page of this was too gripping.
London has been compared to a great monster many times before. Usually it is a voracious eater, plundering the local countryside and resources but this book described it’s main function as respiration. It breathes in people from the surroundings and at the end of the day breathes them out, following bus and train lines like oxygen in the bloodstream. It was striking. It was sombre. It was utterly gripping.
It is narrated by Miss Roach (nearly all the people in this are Mr, Mrs and Miss). She is a spinster, approaching forty with a failed teaching career and a minor job in publishing. It’s 1943 and she’s been bombed out of the city and lives in a dreary converted tearooms in a lightly fictionalised version of Henley on Thames. These lodgings are ruled over by the odious Mr Thwaites so she escapes for coffee visits with her friend Vicki, a german ex-pat who wants to live in the same building; and Lieutenant Lummis, an American who is taking advantage of being away from home.
It seems strange that this is the third novel (of the four I have read) narrated by a woman. Especially strange considering a lot of his work seems to have a deeply ambivalent attitude to women and he is so good at creating female monsters. Roach, for all her quiet unexcitingness, is a character who is easy to warm to. Part of this is due to the reader siding with her against the nasty characters.
Mr Thwaites is a total bully. His main abuse is against the English language. He often lapses into a jokey 'olde-English' manner of talking when he is in a good mood. The protagonist describes this as 'trothing' and she (and we) find it excruciatingly embarrassing and irritating. For example, he describes a pretty woman by saying “The damsel doth not offend the organs of optical vision.” He constantly torments Roach in subtle ways and makes life at the house about him. He was the very best depiction of an over-opinionated bore I have ever read.
The main plot of the book concerns Roach and Lummis and their strange kind of relationship. He once asked her to marry him but has never brought it up since. Mainly he spends his time away somewhere or drunk. The other is about Vicki, a German who seemed very nice at first but becomes Roach’s archenemy/ arch-frenemy, especially in her attempts to muscle in on Lummis. Roach has to realise she doesn’t really care for Lummis, isn’t threatened by Vicki and can overcome Thwaites in order to relinquish her slavery, go back to London and start to live again.
That said, it’s not really about plot, it’s about mood and tone. There’s a dry dinginess to the whole thing that is really resonating with the time of year. I frequently laughed at this book, especially when Thwaites was at his most awful and I was liberated and delighted by the ending.
Very good stuff.
frustratedlibrarian's review against another edition
funny
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
sydneyedens's review against another edition
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I struggled at a few points in the middle to stay interested but then the second half flew by! very funny, in it’s own way. I identified with Miss Roach’s thoughts quite a few times lol. Love a book where everything turns out in the heroine’s favor
davidwright's review against another edition
5.0
Here’s a buried treasure restored to the light of day. Hamilton, who is best known these days for one of the great drinking books, Hangover Square, wrote The Slaves of Solitude some years later on the other side of the War, and brings a more measured, benevolent sensibility to the book, as well as a far more sympathetic and sober heroine in the decent, oft bewildered Miss Roach. Not that there’s a dearth of drinking, especially at the hands of an American Lieutenant stationed in a London suburb in 1943, where he brashly courts Miss Roach with disarming, good-natured ham-handed vigor. The principle arena of the book is the boarding house where Roach and her fellow boarders are nightly subjected to the spectacular boorishness of Mr. Thwaites, a devastating literary creation that had me wincing and gasping as I might over the jaw-dropping sallies of Borat, or of Ricky Gervaise in the original British version of ‘The Office.’ A thoroughgoing comic monster worthy of Dickens, he is joined by the German immigrant Vickie Kugelmann in waging an insidious war of words and slights upon poor Miss Roach. Hamilton writes like a dream, with a rare psychological insight and an intense relish for tying flesh and blood characters into knots of their own devising. His dialogue is word perfect and brilliantly, fully realized – at one point I dissolved into gales over a perfectly placed line that simply read “Oh…… Oh!…… Oh!” There may be parallels and echoes of the global situation to be teased out of the work, and Hamilton beautifully conveys the deprivations of beleaguered Britain growing shabbier and more threadbare by the day, but the book’s real genius lies in moments of defeat, discovery and triumph which spring to vivid life after sixty years of obscurity. This is a true classic, a great introduction to Hamilton, and a delicious read for anyone who enjoys a comedy of manners. A sheer joy, and now one of my new all time favorites.
debumere's review against another edition
3.0
This started as a middling 3, it was ok, slow going, then about halfway it was nearing a 4! But then it started middling towards the end so can’t give it more than a 3.
ap_read's review against another edition
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
ifitsnotbaroque's review against another edition
4.0
People in tight enclosed quarters (a boardinghouse) deal with a global catastrophe (WWII). PERFECT for people in tight enclosed quarters (lock-down) dealing with a global catastrophe (COVID-19).
an_enthusiastic_reader's review against another edition
4.0
Beyond all, a funny, observant comedy of manners undercut with the sad uncertainty of wartime London. The characters come alive on its pages.
readbyryan's review against another edition
5.0
Fiction - WW2, British, Women. eBook. Discovered by eavesdropping.
I’ve been in a reading slump for almost two years. Nothing really appealed to me and it was hard for me to find something that I wanted to read and kept my interest until the end. I saw a conversation with some friends on Facebook about this novel and it was suggested in the Barbara Pym Facebook Fan Page. It sounds interesting so I dove it.
Miss Roach is living outside of London in a boarding house during World War 2 to escape the Blitz. She is unmarried and alone, forcing herself to interact occasionally with the other residents of the boarding house at evening meals and their nightly repose. The house is full of a cast of characters each quirky and interesting or completely dull in their own ways. But life for Miss Roach soon gets dramatic when she meets an American Lieutenant and her friend Vicki moves in to the house.
I loved this book. It took me several pages to get into it, but once she met the American Lieutenant, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. This book describes a little known side of war, the people who are displaced by the war, but aren’t fighting for various reasons. Miss Roach, though navigating the fear and inconveniences of war, still must navigate friendships, acquaintances and romantic relationships. The suspense and drama are slow but building and I really felt for the character of Miss Roach and identified with her in a number of ways.
This book has the feeling of a classic movie, slower pace, long scenes, building of dramatic tension and a satisfying ending without being too pat. This makes sense since the author also wrote the plays “Rope” and “Gas Light” which were both turned into movies. This novel doesn’t have the suspense and twists of those films, but the tight plotting and character development is apparent.
This book squarely pulled me out of my slump. I’ve decided to back off from literary fiction for now. I just need a good book, with a strong plot and some interesting characters. This novel fit the bill and I’m going to investigate more books from Hamilton.
I’ve been in a reading slump for almost two years. Nothing really appealed to me and it was hard for me to find something that I wanted to read and kept my interest until the end. I saw a conversation with some friends on Facebook about this novel and it was suggested in the Barbara Pym Facebook Fan Page. It sounds interesting so I dove it.
Miss Roach is living outside of London in a boarding house during World War 2 to escape the Blitz. She is unmarried and alone, forcing herself to interact occasionally with the other residents of the boarding house at evening meals and their nightly repose. The house is full of a cast of characters each quirky and interesting or completely dull in their own ways. But life for Miss Roach soon gets dramatic when she meets an American Lieutenant and her friend Vicki moves in to the house.
I loved this book. It took me several pages to get into it, but once she met the American Lieutenant, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. This book describes a little known side of war, the people who are displaced by the war, but aren’t fighting for various reasons. Miss Roach, though navigating the fear and inconveniences of war, still must navigate friendships, acquaintances and romantic relationships. The suspense and drama are slow but building and I really felt for the character of Miss Roach and identified with her in a number of ways.
This book has the feeling of a classic movie, slower pace, long scenes, building of dramatic tension and a satisfying ending without being too pat. This makes sense since the author also wrote the plays “Rope” and “Gas Light” which were both turned into movies. This novel doesn’t have the suspense and twists of those films, but the tight plotting and character development is apparent.
This book squarely pulled me out of my slump. I’ve decided to back off from literary fiction for now. I just need a good book, with a strong plot and some interesting characters. This novel fit the bill and I’m going to investigate more books from Hamilton.