"The feeling of the morning after the night before is not a sensation endured by the dissolute only: every morning, for every human being, is, in some sort the morning after the night before: the dissolute merely experience it in a more intense degree. There is an air of debauch about tossed bed-clothes, stale air, cold hot-water bottles, and last night's cast-off clothing, from which even the primmest of maiden ladies cannot hope to escape. Sleep is gross, a form of abandonment, and it is impossible for anyone to awake and observe its sordid consequences save with a faint sense of recent dissipation, of minute personal disquiet and remorse." This paragraph stayed with me for so many days (mornings) that I had to go back through, hunt it down (around page 68), and admire it again: if only for the punctuation. ( )

A thorough study of a few characters living in a boarding house on the suburbs of London during the Blitz. Thoroughly engrossing. ( )

At long last, despite the dreary brain-fog I have been muddling through since November, a novel delights me.
Its setting, funnily enough, is anything but delightful: 1943 England- 'the worst part of the worst war in the world'- not London but a quiet suburb named Thames Lockdon. Here we get to know one Miss Roach, 39, who's moved to the Rosamund Tea Rooms, a boarding house where nothing ever happens. (She's been bombed out of her London flat.) Commuting daily to the city to work in a publishing house, Miss Roach is muddling along in that drear period of history, blackouts and all, when she runs into an American army man and things liven up a bit.

As if to prove that she will be denied even this (questionable) pleasure- the Lieutenant is unreliable and a drinker- 'things' then immediately begin to go sideways. Miss Roach's friend Vicki Kugelmann, who is of all things, a German, decides to move in to the Rosamund herself. That's not all. She also has her rather pettily evil sights on the Lieutenant himself. And that's not all, either. No; incredibly, she also has her sights on a certain other member of the boarding house, a Mr. Thwaites, who happens to be the presiding bully of the establishment.

And it is this character that is the showpiece of the novel in some ways. The skill of author Patrick Hamilton in sketching this mean-spirited, pompous, bitter gasbag is so great that we cringe at his every appearance. Smart at every slight he aims at our unfortunate (but not soft) Miss Roach; we want to look away when Vicki with her incredible slyness starts aiming her arrows at the old fool himself. Mind, Vicki has the other agenda of the Lieutenant too. The said Lieutenant Pike, a bit of a shiftless twit of the kind who can't help being rather dog-like in simple, stupid goofiness, remains inscrutable in his motives throughout, much like Vicki herself. And so is Miss Roach left to wade through pettiness, affection, annoyance, rage, and so much more while struggling to maintain the peace. Don't forget: Thwaites, she and Vicki all live together in the boarding house, and such close quarters would be even more unbearable if there were no peace.

The other boarders too, like Miss Roach, are slaves of solitude. What is it about middle-aged singletons living in boarding-houses that is so poignant? (Ha. And look at us in our luxurious peacetime dwellings, moaning about having to wear masks to protect us from a potentially fatal virus!)The events in the novel lead up to a tense confrontation, a poignant death, and an unexpectedly soul-lifting encounter between Miss Roach and Mr. Prest, a seemingly under-the-radar member of the boarding house.

Why I took so long to find this author I will never know but now that he is found I will sink my claws in; to my delight, the old dear has written several more! And so he is another worthy addition to the pantheon of older Brit writers who never fail to satisfy: Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Taylor, J.G. Farrell, and the like. ( )

I thank the literary review magazine Slightly Foxed for the lead on this perfectly wonderful novel. I sat down with it on a Sunday afternoon after lunch and did not close it until it was done (past my bedtime). I had never heard of the author Patrick Hamilton, a British writer of that amazing generation of the first half of the 20th century, whose biography is deeply soaked in alcohol and pain.

In his only novel set in London during the second world war, Hamilton introduces us to a set of rootless, mostly middle-aged people who have landed in a dreary boarding house in a distant London suburb. Miss Enid Roach (always called Miss Roach - she dislikes her first name) is one of them, a neat, intelligent, thoughtful "spinster" closing in on forty who has been bombed out of her London flat. The boarders gather at their assigned places in the blacked-out dining room, presided over by the insufferable, the preposterous, the loud-mouthed, affected, bombastic, and completely hilarious Mr. Thwaites, who bullies Miss Roach unmercifully. Others come to her rescue - sometimes. The profiles of these boarders are knife-sharp and completely recognizable - both scathing and affectionate. On nearly every page, I was smiling or chuckling or sighing in sympathy or dismay. They are poignant, brave, and ridiculous, and often wryly observed by the out-of-work and out-of-fashion old actor, Mr. Prest, who reads his paper in the corner by himself.

A couple of American officers arrive on the scene - they sleep elsewhere, but take their meals in our boarding house. One of them, a soppy, sodden, callow young man latches onto our Miss Roach, who wonders about his intentions and can't quite make up her mind about him as they drink multiple large whiskeys and pink gin (Gawd, that sounds awful! What on EARTH is pink gin, anyway?). Then, a young woman of German heritage needs a place to stay, and also joins the population. She ceases to be the rather quiet, perhaps put-upon girl Miss Roach has befriended, and her uproarious, brash presence, laced with out-of-date schoolgirl slang ("Oh, how sporty!") throws a wrench (sorry, a spanner) into the delicate balance of the group, and rapidly turns the heads of both Miss Roach's pathetic suitor and the irrepressible Mr. Thwaites (40 years her senior).

Miss Roach makes up her mind. She takes a stand. She inherits some money. And maybe - just maybe - she will get another shot at a life that suits her. The sad, lonely Mr. Prest gets a job and lifts hearts. The officer proves as lonely as any of them.

That's it. A funny, heartbreaking, vivid, colorful, wonderful portrait of people thrown together by chance and some adversity, their travails, pleasures, and shifting dynamics, all trying to get by the only way they know how. If you don't like it, I don't want to hear about it. I now have a copy of Hamilton's Hangover Square on my table, but after all the alcohol consumed in the neighborhood of the Rosamund Tea Rooms, I may need to stay on the wagon for a bit. ( )

Funny, claustrophobic, painful at times...strange to think about the boarding house society, something that I suppose doesn't really exist anymore. Is there a modern equivalent? And those characters--Thwaites with his horrendous Troth talk (I'll have to watch myself in the coming days), the Lieutenant and his whisky, and the horrendously manipulative Vicky. I guess they are a bit one-sided, but I didn't mind. ( )