"Hangover Square" by Patrick Hamilton

Brighton hotel room @ Hangover Square exhibition,
University of Brighton Gallery, 5-27 May 2012

The Hove Book Group reconvened on Thursday 14th June 2012 at The Poets' Corner pub to discuss their very own Patrick Hamilton Festival.  Inspired by the Brighton Festival's events centred around the 50th anniversary of Patrick Hamilton's death, Nigel suggested the novel "Hangover Square" by Patrick Hamilton.  

There was a Hangover Square exhibition at University of Brighton Gallery that ran from 5th-27th May 2012. Keith, Tristan, Hamish and Nigel attended this exhibition.

Nigel Jones, Laura Wilson and Peter Guttridge
@ The Life and Work of Patrick Hamilton discussion,
Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, Sussex,
England on Friday 11th May 2012

Brighton Festival arranged a talk entitled "The Life and Work Of Patrick Hamilton" on Friday 11th May 2012 at the Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton.  Nigel and Hamish attended this event.  The talk was chaired by Peter Guttridge, and the discussion explored Hamilton's life and work from his early stage thrillers Rope and Gaslight including, of course, Hangover Square (1941). The man on the left of the photo is Hamilton’s biographer Nigel Jones (Through a Glass Darkly) and the woman in the middle is crime novelist Laura Wilson (A Little Death, Dying Voices).  The event was produced by Sarah Hutchings and the Collected Works team.

Nigel had also provided an Imagined Soundtrack to the novel that predominantly featured music from the period when the book was written.

Hangover Square: nigeyb's imagined soundtrack by Nigeyb on Mixcloud

Nigel explained that he had wanted to read "Hangover Square" for sometime having developed a fascination with the English literature of the 1930s and 1940s.  Patrick Hamilton was a name that came up frequently in the context of key writers of the period.  His connection with Hove made Patrick Hamilton even more appealing.

"Hangover Square" was written at the peak of Patrick Hamilton's fame - which was by this time considerable.  Like all Patrick Hamilton's novels, the story is in part inspired by incidents from Patrick Hamilton's life.  Like the protagonist and narrator George Harvey Bone, Hamilton's life was becoming saturated in alcohol; and like Bone he too was obsessed by an unattainable woman, in Hamilton's case she was actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald is the inspiration for Netta and in a sense could be Hamilton's revenge on her given the unflattering portrait ("She was completely, indeed sinisterly devoid of all those qualities which her face and body externally proclaimed her to have - pensiveness, grace, warmth, agility, beauty ... Her thoughts resembled those of a fish..").  In a nice touch, the film magazine in Netta's flat in the Hangover Square exhibition had a photo of  Geraldine Fitzgerald on the cover.

Geraldine Fitzgerald on the cover of Film Weekly
@ the Hangover Square exhibition,
University of Brighton Gallery, 5-27 May 2012

Where the book really succeeded for Nigel was in its evocation of London as war looms.  The book was written under the shadow of seemingly unstoppable advance of Germany and Nazism.  The novel searches for a human metaphor to express the sickness that Hamilton perceived in this period.  As a Marxist he identified the petty bourgeoisie from which Netta and Peter had sprung as the enemy.  Peter, and the stranger who comes down to Brighton with Netta and Peter, are both fascists.  The Hangover Square exhibition evoked a scene from the visit to Brighton really powerfully.  Whilst standing in a recreation of Bone's Brighton hotel room the participant listens to an extended section from this part of the novel.  Most powerfully, the part where Bone cannot sleep as he listens to Netta and the stranger talking before making love.  Torture for poor old Bone and the prelude to another schizophrenic episode where he resolves, again, to kill Netta and Peter.

Brighton hotel room @ the Hangover Square exhibition,
University of Brighton Gallery, 5-27 May 2012

The spectre of the forthcoming war, and discussions of fascism, and nods towards contemporary cinema (e.g going to the cinema to see a Tarzan film with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan on the day Germany invade Poland) all added to the magic for Nigel, the book being full of such wonderful period detail.

Nigel really enjoys good quality London fiction (he's almost finished another classic London novel from the same period "London Belongs To Me" by Norman Collins) and declared that "Hangover Square" is "right up there with the best". As the back of his edition states "you can almost smell the gin".  By the end of the book Nigel felt he'd been in and out of a succession of smoky, shabby Earls Court boozers with George and his unsavoury companions.  Netta, the book's femme fatale, is a wonderful fictional creation - beguiling but also totally self-serving.

The perspectives from various different characters enriched Nigel's experience. Even a very minor character such as the young man Bone meets towards the end gives an illuminating and detached perspective of George and his companions.

Nigel found it a very moving book. The reader quickly realises that George has to forget Netta and move on. He knows it too. Yet he just can't escape her. A true lost soul. Nigel felt almost as happy as George after his successful round of golf in Brighton that gives him a glimpse of how life could be away from Netta and her boozy coterie.

It ends in the only way it could. All said, Nigel thought it was a masterpiece. 10/10

A burgeoning Patrick Hamilton collection

Nigel has subsequently read "Through A Glass Darkly" a biography of Patrick Hamilton by Nigel Jones; the Gorse Trilogy; and "The Slaves Of Solitude".  He stated there's more to follow.  He might even mention some of them here.

Keith described "Hangover Square" as "a good book" and "a very human tale".  He thought all the relationships were dependent on getting something from the other person.

For Keith, what made the book so extraordinary was 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 hateful villain, but also fully realised and her willing victim, the hapless George, is heartbreakingly credible.  7/10

Quote @ the Hangover Square exhibition,
University of Brighton Gallery, 5-27 May 2012

Tristan wished he hadn't been to the exhibition before finishing the book as he came across a spoiler that undermined his enjoyment of the book.

Tristan liked the natural style and really enjoyed reading about Brighton and London in the 1930s.  He was less enthralled by the protracted ending.  That said, Tristan saw Netta as an evil like Nazism itself, and that Bone's longing for her is actually a longing for freedom and peace, which she will never allow him. 

Tristan thought Hamilton's descriptions of Netta were brilliant, for example "resembled those of a fish - something seen floating in a tank, brooding, self-absorbed, frigid, moving… Netta Longdon thought of everything in a curiously dull, brutish way… She was completely, indeed sinisterly, devoid of all those qualities which her face and body externally proclaimed her to have - pensiveness, grace, warmth, agility, beauty." Alas, as Tristan observed, her thuggish brain is exalted, not by the pitiful George Bone, but the Mosley-ite Peter.  7/10

Brighton hotel room @ Hangover Square exhibition,
University of Brighton Gallery, 5-27 May 2012

Hamish was very enthusiastic and described the atmosphere of the book as "absolutely fantastic".  He thought there was "great detail in both the book and the exhibition".  

Hamish saw parallels between George's concessions and Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.  Despite the ever present homicidal tendencies exacerbated by George's illness the sympathy of the reader is always with George.  Hamish's sympathy was further underlined as it became clearer that Netta and Peter were closet fascists who are keen on Chamberlain's accommodation with Hitler.  At the novel's conclusion George finally kills them both on the day, in 1939, that Germany invades Poland.  Even the character's name - George - seemed to evoke England's patron saint.  A great observation and a lavish 8.5/10.

Robin texted a rating of 8/10.  The overall Hove Book Group rating was therefore also 8/10.

Nigel, Hamish, Tristan and Keith had all also watched a BBC4 adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's "Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky" trilogy on DVD.  Three interlinked stories centred around a pub in Euston.

In a world of smoky pubs and foggy lamplights, down-at-heel workers and forlorn lovers, the story focuses on The Midnight Bell, a bar off the Euston Road, and observes the impossibility of love between three protagonists. 

Bob, the pub’s barman, is infatuated with penniless prostitute Jenny, believing that he can rescue her through his rapidly diminishing savings. Barmaid Ella, while attracting the attentions of an older, wealthier man, casts lovelorn glances at her colleague. Meanwhile, Jenny, forced onto the streets through poverty, has little time for such niceties, as she casts her flirtatious eyes about in search of custom. This “spellbinding” (The Times) drama observes the struggles of ordinary lives lived close to the poverty line, and the torments and drives of unrequited love, ambition and disappointment. 

Keith declared it not his thing but OK.  Tristan thought it was a classic.  Hamish enjoyed it as did Nigel.  All agreed that it was a good compliment to "Hangover Square".  

And so another convivial evening drew to a close and Hove's finest drifted into the cool Summer's night.  

Next time out the Hove Book Group will be discussing "Blindness" by José Saramago.

"Snowdrops" by AD Miller

Hamish decided to chose a crime book and so visited The Kemp Town Bookshop where his eyes were drawn to "Snowdrops" by AD Miller.  "Ah ha", he thought "This will continue last month's Russian theme as well as meeting my idea for a crime novel".  And so it was that we all read "Snowdrops".

Hamish stated this was not exactly what he was expecting as it was a different kind of crime book.  Hamish described it as elegantly written, clever, interesting and he enjoyed it.  He awarded it with 7/10.

Nigel described the book as "a minor masterpiece".  Despite not having any first hand knowledge of Russia, Nigel felt it evoked powerfully the "Wild East" of post-Glasnost Russia - and this is one of the book's great strengths.  The other being that the story is a compelling, well written page turner.

The book is written as if Nicholas, the English expat lawyer protagonist, is writing a confession to his fiancé who is unaware of this particular story.  Nigel felt this device was a bit clunky and was one of the few weaknesses of the book.    

Nicholas does not start the book as a particularly moral individual (he describes his job as "smearing lipstick on a pig"), however his gradual corruption is extremely credible.  Nigel enjoyed the way the book hints at a dark crime which, as it turns out, whilst still dreadful, also appears to be - by modern Russian standards - fairly mundane.  Nigel identified a number of vivid moments: the extreme Moscow winters; the aggression and rudeness of the average citizen; the horrible nightclubs; the two con tricks - one involving an apartment, the other millions of dollars; and the visit to the dacha.  8/10

Robin described the book as a "slow burn".  Memorable if a little stereotypical.  Robin was struck by how the weather dominates Russians' lives through the course of the almost unbearably long and cold winter and the all too short hot summer.  Robin loved the descriptions of places "the ice on the (Moscow) river was buckling and cracking, great plates of it rubbing and jostling each other, as the water shrugged it off, a vast snake sloughing of its skin."  Overall Robin felt it was an impressive 'first novel' - quick, absorbing, mildly thought-provoking and moving.  7/10

Keith described an "entirely linear plot" and "the inevitable forward motion" of one man's failure to swerve any of the moral hazards he encounters while working as an expat lawyer in Russia.  The narrator is a flawed and cowardly man.  Despite this Keith wanted to read on because of the insights he got about Russian culture and society - and this coming from a man whose screen saver is a picture of him standing in Red Square.

Keith felt the book really nailed that heady sense of possibility that comes with the early stages of living abroad; the feeling that you can be who you want to be, run risks you never would normally take because you've stepped out of time for a bit.  Nick, the narrator, wanted his fiancé to forgive his depraved past and moral indifference. Keith stated that the the novel occasionally veered rather too much towards caricature and for this reason he felt he could only award it with 6/10 using his new harsh marking system (in which a ten is an impossibility).

Tristan really enjoyed the book. It was an easy read, but quite a page turner.  Tristan knows next to nothing about modern Russia (other than a rather dubious take on it from James Hawes' Rancid Aluminium), so he rather enjoyed the author's personal assessment of Russia and the Russians. Having said that, it did sometimes feel like point-scoring as he revealed yet another observation about Russian life, but on balance Tristan liked it, and especially the comparisons with the UK.

The author's bleak view of the seediness, hopelessness and corruption is no doubt exaggerated for literary effect, but Tristan was sure there must be some grains of truth in there somewhere.  Tristan enjoyed the characters, especially the embittered foreign correspondent, and the neighbour who spoke in aphorisms ("only an idiot smiles all the time", "invite a pig to dinner and it will put its feet on the table").  Tristan also liked the sense of foreboding created by his revealing in advance that things weren't going to work out well, although the whole concept of him writing to his fiancé was an annoying distraction.

In terms of the character of the protagonist, Tristan liked his strained relations with his family ("we sat looking at the children, willing them to do something adorable or eccentric"). The one thing he wasn't convinced about was his motivation: if he knew what was going on, how come there wasn't a bigger sense of fatalism? ie how could he be naive and knowing at the same time? In this sense, his motivation seemed unclear, and the ending felt a bit weak.  Overall, though, Tristan concluded it was a good, if light, read, and gave it 6.5/10.

A very respectable overall rating of 7 out of 10 for AD Miller's debut novel from Hove's Premier Book Group.

"Brother" directed by Aleksei Balabanov

To compliment Snowdrops, Hamish had also selected a film called "Brother" which was directed by Aleksei Balabanov.

Hamish observed that "Brother" is the only one of Balabanov's films to be set in a socially articulated contemporary Russia, and it effectively delineates the contradictions between the provinces and the big city, between the penurious old Russia and the new Russia of petty mafiosi and feckless youth. It shows the casual contemporary Russian racism towards Jews, Chechens and other "black-arsed" trans-Caucasians. The film's protagonist Danila symbolises the beginning of the backlash against total cultural Americanisation.

Hamish felt that the the film also gave a wonderfully resonant picture of modern St Petersburg, the most ambiguous and multifarious of Russian cities. When Danila arrives we are given brief glimpses of its classical centre, including the statue of the Bronze Horseman by the Neva, but we also get the tenement blocks of 19th-century Petersburg, inhabited by the heroes of Gogol and Dostoevsky. (Indeed the whole film can be seen as an ironic subversion of Crime and Punishment, with the killing but without the repentance.) And, cheek by jowl, we also see the Soviet Leningrad of communal flats and the new, bourgeois Petersburg of the glamorous rock elite.

Tristan found this an interesting film to watch, mostly because of its portrayal of Russia around the turn of the millennium. He liked the moral ambiguity of the protagonist, and his descent into violence. However, it did feel rather ham-fisted in a lot of places, and he found the protagonist's love of the music of Nautilus Pompilius somewhat silly. Pros: learnt a new way to eat an egg.  Cons: the bullet proof CD player stretched his credulity.

Nigel thought it was interesting to see Leningrad/St Petersburg depicted in a film set in the late 1990s.  Nigel described the film as "watchable and reasonably entertaining if barely credible".  Ultimately he felt the film was a disappointment - it was directed in a very routine manner with average cinematography.  Whilst providing a few insights into the grimness of Russia post-Communism and the bleakness of life there was very little to elevate it above average. Enjoyable tosh.

Thereafter we discussed all manner of interesting topics - the suitability of the book and film "Hunger Games" for ten year old girls; the extent to which Roy Hodgson would make a good England manager; the London Mayoral election; the film "Il divo" (2008) - the story of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, who has served as Prime Minister of Italy seven times since the restoration of democracy in 1946; how much we miss Nick Smith; the history of the world; poker tournaments; prostate pain; Arthurian legend; Model T Fords; Sasa Papac; and just how cold it can get in Moscow.

Nigel then introduced his idea for a Patrick Hamilton themed discussion based around his book "Hangover Square", and - with that in mind - here's a couple of items to set the tone for our forthcoming Hamilton Fest...

Patrick Hamilton - introductory video

  

nigeyb's imagined soundtrack to the book 'Hangover Square' by Patrick Hamilton

Hangover Square: nigeyb's imagined soundtrack by Nigeyb on Mixcloud