A review by davidwright
The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton

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.