"The Hiding Place" (1971) by Corrie Ten Boom

On Thursday 5th June 2014, the hardest working Book Group in Hove reconvened for another evening of literary cut and thrust, and insightful cultural comment, and the discussion took place at a new venue: The Hove Deep Sea Anglers Club in West Hove's fashionable angling district.

Robin, full of the joys of Dutch cycle paths, and Van Gogh, wanted to share his love of the Netherlands with his HBG compadres and, frankly, who could blame him.  His eyes flashing with the gleam of the zealot, he introduced his book choice as "charming" and "understated" for Robin had selected "The Hiding Place" by a Dutch woman called Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983).   

Corrie ten Boom and her family were Christians who were active in social work in their home town of Haarlem, the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation, they chose to express their faith through peaceful resistance to the Nazis by helping the Dutch underground. They hid, fed and transported Jews and underground members hunted by the Gestapo out of Holland. They were able to save the lives of around 800 Jews, in addition to protecting underground workers.  On 28 February 1944, they were betrayed and Corrie and several relatives were arrested. The ten Boom family members were separated and transferred to concentration camps. Corrie was allowed to stay with her sister, Betsy. Corrie's father, sister and one grandchild died. Corrie was released in December 1944.

Robin

Robin highlighted the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness that also characterised another recent choice "The Railway Man".  The book prompted Robin to take stock of his life and re-evaluate many of his assumptions, including the significance of ants.  6.5/10

Nick, who could not attend, emailed through his thoughts... he confessed to breaching the 8th Rule of Book Group: never read a book cover before reading the book. After reading the cover, Nick concluded Corrie's book was not for him.  Nick was to quickly realise his face was covered in egg as he "couldn’t have been more wrong" about Corrie, and her book: An inspirational read, full of vivid characters.  Every situation has things you can learn from - a message believers and non-believers can all appreciate.  Nick was also struck by the similarities with The Railway Man - the difficulty of forgiveness, the importance of redemption, the need to share traumatic experiences.  7/10

Don: a peaceful warrior

Don explained how he is steeped in books about the Nazis and the holocaust.  Don described Corrie as a peaceful warrior, resisting inhuman evil without violence and responding to personal persecution and injustice with grace, love and forgiveness.  "Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles, it empties today of its strength", murmured Don before lavishing the book with 8/10.

Nigel agreed that this was an incredible story of selflessness, sacrifice and bravery, and an always timely reminder about the evils of fanaticism and intolerance.  He observed how Corrie ten Boom believed she was an instrument of God and all that happened to her was part of His purpose, which Nigel felt raised many broader questions that the book did not address.  The book is clearly pitched at a Christian audience with little regard to style or structure; very clunky, and painful to read in places. Was this the translation?  Or just the fact that the writers were not really concerned about how the tale was told?  Nigel explained that he has no faith and finds some aspects of Christianity off putting. Corrie's inspirational bravery was insufficient to redeem the book's more negative aspects.  4/10

Tristan was able to rise above the "plodding and pedestrian prose" to celebrate Corrie's selflessness and bravery.  Despite ten months of cruelty whilst interned, Corrie always prayed for the hearts of her captors. In contrast to Eric Lomax, author of "The Railway Man", Corrie was constantly forgiving her captors and those who persecuted her, and in this way was able to accept her experiences almost as they were happening.  Tristan observed how this was in stark contrast to Lomax who was only able to reach a similar outcome after finally seeking counselling having endured years of suppressing his feelings about his wartime experiences.  "Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tyre?" asked Tristan.  6/10

Keith was also unable to attend in person however, through the medium of email, told us he felt it "a book of two halves": life in Haarlem before and during WW2, and the horrors of imprisonment and Ravensbruck.  The first half held more interest, whilst the second, like "The Railway Man", was an account of terrors barely possible to imagine. The book is a Christian testimony, and that perspective contains both Corrie’s and her sister Betsie’s outlook.  This aspect of the book did not work for Keith (including the workbook where Keith was asked to examine the fact that ‘God governs all things, even those that appear to us senseless and cruel’). From a purely literary perspective Keith gave it a 7/10.

"The Hiding Place" (1971) by Corrie Ten Boom stimulated an interesting and wide-ranging discussion about faith and bravery.

Robin enthused about his film choice, "Lust For Life" (1956) directed by Vincente Minnelli.

Robin really enjoyed this biographical film about the life of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.  The portrayal of Van Gogh by Kirk Douglas ticked all Robin's boxes as did the the madness of creative passion and the heartbreaking tragedy of Vincent's starving, misunderstood genius.  8/10

Tistan felt the film had not aged well describing it as "mildly interesting" and "unconvincing".  4/10

Nigel felt it was competent but very dated and was curiously uninspiring and dull.  The direction and cinematography were pedestrian and this is where  Vincente Minnelli probably missed a trick - for all Kirk Douglas's efforts at bringing the tortured artist to life he needed some cinematic tricks to help create a more compelling film. Anthony Quinn's Gaugin is the best thing about it.  4/10

Keith appreciated the canvas stills which were woven in to the film's fabric and

Keith - reminded of Russ Abbott

the early section about Vincent's life in the Belgian mining town.  Keith was not entirely con-Vince’d by Mr Douglas. With his red hair, Keith got flashes of Russ Abbott. Everyone should know a bit about Vincent, and the film gives an easy-access view of his challenge to the art establishment. So why not give it a view? 7/10

Robin then apologised at length for his appalling musical selection.  Nobody had anything even slightly positive to say about "Van Halen" (1978):  

Don described it as the musical equivalent of the M25.

Tristan called it a base parody of music.    

Robin, in between apologies, called it an abomination.

Keith wanted it consigned to the cultural landfill. 

Nigel was reminded of a pumped up bodybuilder on steroids and had one question "Why?"  

Out of curiosity, Nigel had established NME's top tracks of 1978, as a way of trying to establish what he was listening to whilst in an alternate universe people were buying Van Halen's album in their droves...

Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love
Public Image Ltd. - Public Image
Ian Dury - What A Waste
Rolling Stones - Miss You
Elvis Costello - (I Don't Want To) Go To Chelsea
Siouxsie And The Banshees - Hong Kong Garden
The Clash - White Man In Hammersmith Palais
Magazine - Shot By Both Sides
Bryan Ferry - Sign Of The Times
Evelyn "Champagne" King - Shame
Ian Dury - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

...why would anyone listen to Van Halen with that level of brilliance and diversity going on elsewhere?

With the question left hanging in the air, the HBG bade each other, and their new angling chums, a fond farewell before leaving the luxury of the HDSA club for the world beyond.

"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.