Customer Reviews

Hangover Square: A Story of Darkest Earl's Court (Penguin Modern Classics)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has to be among the best novels of the last century. It is tragic, funny and moving. Hamilton was an outstanding writer whose understanding of seemy pub life and the dark side of drinking has never been bettered. Martin Amis would kill to have this much talent or an ounce of Hamilton's compassion.

An unusual and gripping book. The sheer injustice that is suffered by George, the central character, is balanced with our knowledge of what is REALLY going on in his head when he has one of his 'dead' moods... terrible murderous thoughts unknown even to kindly George himself. Thus we see-saw mercilessly back and forth along with George's own unacknowledged schizophrenia, seeing him unwittingly inching closer to his ultimate revenge - a revenge that we realise must destroy him too.

It's impossible not to feel compassion, frustration and sadness when reading this book. Hamilton's use of dialogue and spare description perfectly evokes both the glitz and the seamier sides of pre-war London, a London which he himself had seen and experienced. Indeed my one cautionary note would be that the old fashioned London dialogue and vocabulary may be tricky for some non-British readers to follow.

I highly recommend "Hangover Square" as a good read. Hamilton is a sadly neglected novelist, and "Hangover Square" one of his best novels. Writing during the 1930's and war years, his books capture the essence of loneliness, some hopeless, empty, tragic quality of the human soul. George, through whom the story unfolds is a lonely bachelor who frequents the dingy Earls Court of the period; gas-lit bedsit land, sleazy bars, the pub-land drifters and no-hopers, low-grade hotels, Lyons tea houses - this is the world which Hamilton so sensitively and so achingly captures.

The tormented George pursues his "ideal", the cruel, amoral Netta, to the point where his obsession with her becomes sick and destructive. Behind this agonising tale looms the shadow of the imminent world war. A brilliant, dark, gripping story.

Firstly let me just say that i enjoyed this book very much, as it is the sort of lit
i usually go for, as i like books about outsiders, underdogs people who are at the edge of society who don't necessarily fit in, or don't want to. But anyway this isn't a review as there are people better at it than me.
This is just a warning that JB Priestly, the person who wrote the introduction
(in my penguin paperback version at least) has decided it his his job to tell us what happens at the end of the book. I can't really imagine why anyone in their right mind would do this, but i don't think it's necessary and if you don't want to find out what happens before you've read it, leave the introduction alone untill you've finished the book.

It's arguable, but I think this is Hamilton's masterpiece. The reason I say this is the way he creates such a plausible and compelling account of a descent into madness and links it so effortlessly to the moral collapse of Neville Chamberlains England.

I have read this book many times, and Hamilton is so skilled at playing the readers hopes that each time I root for George and hope he will make the two or three simple choices that will save him (one may have the same feelings about England when reading Churchill on the lead up to World War 2). But he never does- the tragedy unfolds from its seeds on the first few pages and is always terrible.

In Netta he has surely also created one of the finest and most repulsive femmes fatale ever.

If you have ever been unhappily in love and been led a merry dance, you will find George Harvey Bone in yourself and be both moved, afraid and grateful that you escaped.

If you have ever lived in a country busy being sold down the river by weak leaders, then the same applies.

Buy this book!

Just a warning that the idiotic foreword to this great book rambles for a few pages and then suddenly, and with no warning, ruins the plot for the whole story in a single sentence. God knows what the publishers or the introduction writer were thinking. Do NOT read it. Apart from which its not a good intro anyway.

Thankfully all was not lost as this is a superb, taut and atmospheric novel that took me to the smoky, dingy pubs of 1939 London. George's obsession for a dreadful girl and his increasingly severe schizophrenia unwind into a tragedy full of frustration, loneliness, cruelty and lots of booze. A great read.

The prose is so closely hitched to George's thoughts that in places the pace can drag slightly, but never for long. I also found the snippets of poetry and thesaurus entries distracting.

Described by the [London] Daily Telegraph as "a criminally neglected British author," Patrick Hamilton wrote nine novels from the 1920s through the early 1950s, along with the famous dramas of Rope and Gaslight, and though he earned the admiration of a host of famous authors, from Graham Greene and Doris Lessing to Nick Hornby, he never achieved the popular success he deserved, either in his own time or throughout the twentieth century. In this decade, however, virtually all his novels have been reprinted in both Europe and in the US, and he is finally beginning to be recognized for his astute observations about his times and for his insights into the minds of his characters.

Indicating in the subtitle that this is "A story of darkest Earl's Court," Hangover Square is set in what was then a seamy, low-rent district of London, a place in which those who were down on their luck, out of work, or homeless could manage to scrounge through life. Bars and cheap entertainment provided evening activities for people who often did not get up before noon. George Harvey Bone, the main character here, is out of work. Like the other unemployed and under-employed people he associates with, he lives on the fringes of the entertainment business-part-time actors and actresses, managers, and movie makers who party long and hard, fueled by massive quantities of alcohol.

George's drinking might have triggered his earliest his "blackouts," but here they have become more frequent and more debilitating--psychotic episodes of schizophrenia which end with the demand that he kill Netta Longdon to save himself. Netta is a failed actress--a beautiful, spoiled, and manipulative woman who ignores George except when she wants money, a woman who sleeps around with his friends (though not with him), and uses him. He is so desperate for her attentions, however, that he allows himself to be degraded, always hoping that she will see him for the person he really is. As he is driven closer to the edge and as his "dead moods" get closer together, the suspense grows. "Getting killed would serve her jolly well right," he rationalizes.

The narrative line, which takes place inside George's head, is strong and emotionally affecting, and though many contemporary readers will be frustrated at George's passivity in the face of Netta's abuse, few will fail to empathize. Based in part on his own life, the novel is an intense psychological drama written by a man who became an alcoholic at a young age, after being disfigured in an accident. Frequently developing passionate but unrequited attachments, he wrote about these women in his novels. Famed actress Geraldine Fitzgerald was recognized as the model for Netta Longdon, something her obituary confirms. Mary Whipple

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The Gorse Trilogy: "The West Pier", "Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse", "Unknown Assailant": "The West Pier", "Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse", "Unknown Assailant"

What an extraordinary, tortured work of literature. It's like an anguished essay from an adolescent and Hamilton was young when he wrote it.

I'm not sure modern definitions of Schizophrenia would accord with the "click" moods of our hero but it's cleverly handled.

The atmosphere of doom pervades. The seamy pubs, the trains, the taxis, all the getting about and booking into seedy hotels, the desperation and longing for love - I am reminded of Brighton Rock, if only in the realistic portrayal of how unpleasant people can be to each other.

Georage Henry Bone has two problems in his life. He is hopelessly infatuated with the cruel and scheming Netta, and he suffers from periodic "dead moods" which the book intimates are a form of schizophrenia. Through a world of smoky pubs, their inhabitant lowlives, and endless drinking we see the development of both George's infatuation and his illness. All this against a background of approaching WW2.

What makes this book so extraordinary is the total authenticity of the characters. It doesn't deal in great universal truths, other than unfulfilled potential and unrequited love, but it does deal in the minutiae of ordinary everyday life, and does so brilliantly. Netta is a quite stupendoulsy hateful villain, but is also a fully realised, 3 dimensional and believable character. Likewise, her willing victim, the hapless George is heartbreakingly credible.

Hamilton doesn't just give us believeable characters, he also provides a world for them to inhabit, the pubs, bars and drinking dens of pre-war London and Brighton are evocatively portrayed.

Definitely very highly recommended.

This is criminally underrated. It is a tragicomic study in a man's hopeless infatuation with a woman. Hamilton uses his own experience of unrequited love to make this story as funny as it is hopelessly tragic. It is beautifully written and captures London incredibly skilfully. One of the great British novels. More should be made of him.