Alexis Smith Gets Role of Nora in 'Human Bondage' -- Two New Films to Arrive Today". The New York Times. August 12, 1944. p.16. The whole plot – if that is the word - of this thing for 98% of the whole book can be summed up in 2:37 by Frank and Nancy Sinatra: Hangover Square was immediately lauded on its publication. James Agee, writing in the Daily Express, called it "a magnificent thriller". [1] Hamilton's friend Michael Sadleir considered it his best novel. John Betjeman in The Spectator referred to it as being in "the top class of English novels". [2] Nothing so benign occurs at the climax of Hangover Square. Published in 1941 and later hailed in the press as “one of the great books of the 20th century”, Hangover Square, like Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, is written in a drolly detached style and explores the shabby crevices of London life and the dark, despairing alleys of the human heart. Which is Hamilton’s point. Or rather, because novels don’t exist to make a point, it’s what we can infer from all that Hamilton shows us. George’s aunt embodies old-style decencies. Her washed-out kindliness is a world away from the rootless, amoral decadence of Hangover Square. Bone belongs to the Square but he is not really of it. At the beginning of the novel we are even told that he would prefer to be a countryman. ‘He wanted a cottage in the country – yes, a good old cottage in the country – and he wanted Netta as his wife. No children, just Netta – and to live with her happily and quietly ever afterwards.’ In your dreams, as the saying goes.

Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton - AbeBooks Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton - AbeBooks

The protagonist suffers from spells of dead moods during which he perceives reality differently and when he comes to, he can’t remember anything… Hamilton finished writing the novel in February 1941, delivering it a month later to his publishers. He seems to have been in two minds about its merit, telling his brother Bruce that it was “unambitious” and yet, perhaps, “the best thing I’ve ever written!”

After a brief career as an actor, he became a novelist in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America).

Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton, Anthony Quinn - Waterstones

By the end of his life, his drinking was the stuff of legend – glasses of Guinness in the morning, gin before lunch, whisky after tea, a post-war intake that apparently rarely fell below about three bottles a day. For want of anything better to say about this quite remarkable classic of pre-war English literature I shall quote Keith Waterhouse, "you can almost smell the gin." In the year preceding Chamberlain's declaration of war George Harvey Bone is loafing about Earl's Court, mooning over a complete bitch and driving himself to an alcoholic rage. Hamilton is famous for his use of slang and conversational tone and ability to evoke his chosen location, notably the London pub, and I certainly wouldn't find myself disagreeing with that assessment. Hamilton's ability to write believably from both aspects of a schizophrenic personality is the most enjoyable and impressive aspect for me, the final chapters causing a torrent of conflicting emotional reactions. Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against, bad faith, oppression and persecution – and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.It’s possible, I suppose, to interpret Bone’s response to Chamberlain’s words as prompted by King Street (the CP headquarters) which, following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on 23rd August, took the line that the war against Hitler was an Imperialist one and should be ignored by Marxists. But in his biography, Nigel Jones says that Hamilton never accepted this line and was, for all his Communist sympathies, Churchillian in his patriotism. Not that Jones has anything to say about this moment. My own view is that Bone is understandably irked by Chamberlain’s routine piety. Anyway, by his double murder he has brought speedy destruction on the basically rotten life of which he had for too long been a part and which now requires his own death. For suddenly death is everywhere. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Apart from being a source of money and alcohol, George has another attraction for Netta: his friendship with Johnnie, who works for a theatrical agent. Netta hopes that through him she will get to meet Eddie Carstairs, a powerful figure in the theatre. However, in a final reversal of fortune it is George, not Netta, who ends up attending a party amongst the theatrical great and good whilst Netta is cast aside by Eddie who — unlike George — has immediately seen her for the unpleasant person she is. George suddenly realises what it is like to be surrounded by people who are interested in him as a person rather than for what he can provide. Yes, obsession is an important theme in this one. Love that is gradually turned into something sinister and finally love as a fully blown obsession. Not just love/ hate type of relationship but the kind of obsession that can drive one mad, that is at its root is mad. Written in third person narration, it feels somewhat like a diary because there is so much focus put on the inner state of the protagonist. I wanted to call it a diary of obsession but I realized it is more than that. It is a diary of an individual, a diary that captures wonderfully all the awful desperation that is to be found in his soul. If I’m making it sound like a marvellously depressive read, it is because it really is.