This was a book I picked up from the Retro Reads shelves in the library. Focused on Robert, who is about to sell the dry cleaning business in South London his mother set up and he continued to run, it's a year's worth of coming to terms with leaving the place and lives he's come to know intimately. Alongside Robert, the book also dips into the lives of some of those who use the dry cleaners. ( )

This is an odd little book I picked up because I think Tomas mentioned it on The Readers podcast. It reminded me a lot of So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor which came out 2 years previously. They’re both what I call ‘slice of life’ novels. Sure, there is a nominal plot point to be revealed, but it isn’t urgent and not all of the narratives have anything more to do with each other than serendipity and propinquity. The thing that reminded me of the McGregor novel is the fact that both main characters save objects that most everyone else would throw away. In Duffy’s book it is a dry cleaner who picks his patrons’ pockets before doing the work and then files the things away just in case someone comes back to claim them. No one ever does and honestly the collection doesn’t have much bearing on anyone’s story, but works as a metaphor on its own.

The story mostly revolves around Robert and Akeel; Robert is selling his cleaning business and Akeel wants to buy it. In a sort of forced apprenticeship, Akeel must spend a year in the shop with Robert to learn the ropes. Slowly the men form a friendship all the while knowing it won’t last beyond the year. Robert’s wife Jean left him 25 years ago with their daughter Katie and has only recently communicated with him and it is not good news. Eventually we learn why they split and it’s a little surprising.

The stories of some of Robert’s customers are interspersed through the novel. Helen, the ex-pat from New Zealand. Dean the bad lad and drug dealer. Marilyn the home health worker who always seems to be eating. Mostly they hold your interest, but I found myself skimming some of Dean’s story.

Surprising also is the amount of racial pre-supposition that lurks waiting to trap the white reader. I admit I didn’t originally conceive of anyone in this book as other than white until explained otherwise. Certainly laid open my subconscious character imaginings. From what I understand it’s pretty common and not just to us pasty pale people. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of about race relations in the book and it was enlightening and thought-provoking without being preachy. Also concealed are some other situations that I thought cleverly done. Like the whole introduction to Helen’s story leads us to believe she is the trapped wife and mother, but no, she’s the nanny; trapped also, but not equally.

The writing is engaging and she has some interesting turns of phrase like this one on page 62 - “St. Anne’s Residences were built in the 1890s, the work of a handful of London philanthropists, old men nervous of camel’s humps and needle’s eyes.”

All in all a satisfying book about a time and place and the people who live there, work there and are dying of love there. ( )

Some beautiful writing but just wasn't doing it for me.

This is about the residents of an area of south London near Loughborough Junction station, an area I'm fairly familiar with as I used to know someone who lived round there. The main part of the plot is about Robert, who owns the dry cleaners, but is going to sell up to Akeel, a young Muslim man. He teaches Akeil the business and that as a cleaner, he sees secret parts of his customers lives. Wooven around this story, we see the lives of some of his customers, including an Australian nanny, a mixed-race social worker, a gay dance instructor, a criminal.

When I first moved to London, I loved reading books set here where the location and London's mix of people was an important part of the story, but now I'm ready to leave London, I'm less keen on that type of book, so I didn't think I would like this that much. But it managed to surprise me and was much more memorable than I was expecting. It becomes clear early in the book that Robert has a secret, but what it was took me completely by surprise. There were also a couple of other little twists that made me question by own assumptions. It also has a beautifully poignant ending. ( )

19 December 2009 - Borders closing down sale

I read about this book on the DoveGreyReader blog and was intrigued, so glad to pick it up in the Borders sale.

Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things sought to portray an urban streetscape through the shifting viewpoints of its residents, and Andrew Sean Greer's Story of a Marriage played with our expectations of race and class; this novel, feted like those two, felt like it achieved what they failed. Set in Loughborough Junction (between Camberwell and Brixton), this is a hugely recognisable South London, and I do wonder what someone who hadn't lived in the boroughs South East of the Thames would make of it (an interesting thought given the discussion we had about What Was Lost and Birmingham at Book Group the other night). Centering around the aging Robert, slowly planning to give up his dry cleaners, and Akeel, the young man from East London who wants to take over the business, Duffy quietly assembles a cast of supporting characters and weaves them seamlessly and cleverly through the (little) action of the plot, just as I recall the community in New Cross working. All are drawn well, with their different voices, and there's a quiet elegaic feeling for the things that are lost and the things that are left behind. From a homesick Australian nanny to a singing Rastafarian man on the 345 bus, we have a bond with the characters, who seem like people drawn from life, rather than invented cyphers.

As I consider the book after finishing it, it reminds me of a TV documentary shown a while back about the inhabitants of a tower block in South London which was being regenerated, and I wonder if that, directly or indirectly, inspired the author.

There was a little more action than I at first expected, and I'm not sure if I will re-read this or not, so it will rest in my permanent collection for a while, but available for loan. I think I'll find myself thinking about this book well after closing its pages at the end of the story. ( )