2008-09-12 Patrick Hamilton - Hangover Square

Super! It's rare that I just pick up a book while browsing at random - normally I have very fixed ideas of what I wish to buy - but I bought this on a whim, grabbed by the synopsis, and I don't regret it a bit. Hangover Square is a wonderful read, a dark, comic tale of loneliness, obsession, schizophrenia and drunkeness. George Harvey Bone is obsessed with Netta Longdon, a beautiful, enigmatic woman, and, to be frank, a right bitch. She manipulates him and takes him for whatever she can, perfectly aware of his infatuation with her. Her and her coterie of similarly selfish friends treat kindly George as a mug, letting him dance attendance on them, a tolerated hanger on in their lifestyle of daytime drinking, smoking and general looseness. Bits of the book remind me of my own life (in more ways than one), which was certainly a striking experience! This was partly why the book was so fascinating to me, and the synopsis grabbed me so in the first place.

While it's a dark book, and one justly wants to give Netta a lot more than a good slap for the cruel way she goes about her business, it's also a very funny one, with a great sense of black humour. It's great fun to read, and one really hopes George will be able to release himself from the girl's grasp. The plot moves briskly, and there's not a dull page as a host of fascinating people dip in and out of things. Possibly the greatest achievement of the book is the underlying levels of compassion that Hamilton has for George, the saddening way the character's real loneliness is conveyed. Hangover Square is dark and funny and fascinating, but, come it's final few pages, it is also very, very sad. It's a book that should be far more widely read than it is.