61 lines
5.8 KiB
JavaScript
61 lines
5.8 KiB
JavaScript
var __defProp = Object.defineProperty;
|
|
var __getOwnPropDesc = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor;
|
|
var __getOwnPropNames = Object.getOwnPropertyNames;
|
|
var __hasOwnProp = Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty;
|
|
var __export = (target, all) => {
|
|
for (var name in all)
|
|
__defProp(target, name, { get: all[name], enumerable: true });
|
|
};
|
|
var __copyProps = (to, from, except, desc) => {
|
|
if (from && typeof from === "object" || typeof from === "function") {
|
|
for (let key of __getOwnPropNames(from))
|
|
if (!__hasOwnProp.call(to, key) && key !== except)
|
|
__defProp(to, key, { get: () => from[key], enumerable: !(desc = __getOwnPropDesc(from, key)) || desc.enumerable });
|
|
}
|
|
return to;
|
|
};
|
|
var __toCommonJS = (mod) => __copyProps(__defProp({}, "__esModule", { value: true }), mod);
|
|
var stdin_exports = {};
|
|
__export(stdin_exports, {
|
|
default: () => _2021_05_25_hangover_square,
|
|
metadata: () => metadata
|
|
});
|
|
module.exports = __toCommonJS(stdin_exports);
|
|
var import_index_10ac95e2 = require("./index-10ac95e2.js");
|
|
const metadata = {
|
|
"title": "Hangover Square",
|
|
"author": "Patrick Hamilton",
|
|
"score": 2.5,
|
|
"image": "hangover-square",
|
|
"slug": "hangover-square",
|
|
"book_review": true,
|
|
"date": "2021-05-25T00:00:00.000Z",
|
|
"finished": "2021-05-01T00:00:00.000Z",
|
|
"draft": false,
|
|
"tags": ["fiction", "london", "twentieth-century"],
|
|
"links": [
|
|
{
|
|
"country": "\u{1F1EC}\u{1F1E7}",
|
|
"store_name": "Hive",
|
|
"link": "https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Patrick-Hamilton/Hangover-Square/19065452"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"country": "\u{1F1FA}\u{1F1F8}",
|
|
"store_name": "bookshop.org",
|
|
"link": "https://bookshop.org/books/hangover-square-9781933372068/9781933372068"
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
};
|
|
const _2021_05_25_hangover_square = (0, import_index_10ac95e2.c)(($$result, $$props, $$bindings, slots) => {
|
|
return `<p>I was gifted this book by my mother, so I feel terrible for what I am about to say about it. It was gifted with the best of intentions: someone or other famous reported that it made them feel at home in London, a city I love. But a city that can feel indifferent to you. This book did not make me feel at home in this city. It showed how it is possible for a place to be the centre of art, politics, ambition and still allow anyone to shift un-affixed through their life.</p>
|
|
<p>Credit where it\u2019s due: Hamilton captures this mood so well in <em>Hangover Square</em>, a book set in London in the winter of 1938. Written between 1939-1941, just as the Second World War loomed and then broke, the backdrop is bleak, and various characters\u2019 enthusiasm for the Nazi regime isn\u2019t particularly endearing.</p>
|
|
<p>This is a bleak book. There is little in it to broadcast hope. We get a few weak flashes, but we know well enough that they\u2019re faltering and won\u2019t last the evening. Let alone the night. This is thanks to our hapless protagonist, George Harvey Bone: a man who seems rarely to have his own self interest at heart. A man who is in hapless love with Netta, a sometimes actress but always cruel woman who uses Bone for nothing more than social leverage and free drinks.</p>
|
|
<p>The drudgery of unrequited love apparently runs in Hamilton\u2019s other works, namely <em>Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky</em>. He writes it incredibly well. Though I am largely unsympathetic to Bone, Hamilton draws out the sympathy, even when you\u2019re pretty stone-cold on the same narrative arc repeating itself for the fourth-or-fifth time in the book.</p>
|
|
<p>Netta strings Bone, along with her two other drinking companions (and sometimes lovers) Micky and Peter through the pubs of Euston. Gin and beer and sandwiches appear cycle through this book. Unsurprisingly, Hamilton himself was a drunk. A lonely drunk. But golly can he write.</p>
|
|
<p>This complete haplessness and lack of control over his whole life makes the book drag. There is little to no change in narrative style or characters throughout the book. We\u2019re introduced to Bone\u2019s \u201Cdead moods\u201D, what we might now recognise as schizophrenic or psychotic/depersonalisation episodes. Times when the illusion of self and consciousness are completely freed from him, and he is overwhelmed by a desire to kill Netta.</p>
|
|
<p>But these are never explored. He\u2019s had dead moods for his entire life, but he\u2019s not known Netta his entire life. Are they an expression of things he truly wants, or some perfect negative of his \u201Cnormal\u201D self? We\u2019re never given any hint of an answer.</p>
|
|
<p>At no point do you believe that Bone actually will change, or wants to change. He has no mastery of himself, he is subject to the abandonment of others. Romantically and platonically, people leave Bone. It\u2019s sad, but also I have no sense of who Bone was. He\u2019s taken advantage of by those around him, they see him as nothing more than the taxi fares and gin bottles he can buy. And they\u2019re not wrong. They\u2019re obviously callous and unkind and taking advantage, but\u2026 what else is Bone? Our poetic narrator.</p>
|
|
<p>If nothing else, read sections of the book, just for the language. It is singularly the largest redeeming feature, making this book worth the (literally groan-inducing) effort that it took from me at other times. It reads as though freshly graduated from the school of Dickens, though with the bone-tired-from-the-effort-of-alcoholism that can\u2019t be bought at eighteen years old. A mature student of the Dickensian school, then.</p>
|
|
<p>I\u2019m unsure if the prose capture the 1940s accurately, or instead a few decades before. I\u2019m not familiar with literature of the time. The little interactions between characters, or our narrators internal monologue all shine. Simply worth reading. Hamilton was a talented writer, and though I\u2019ll gladly turn my nose up at his choice of subject, the way he wrote it was good.</p>
|
|
<p>Read it, but don\u2019t expect to be drawn in. 2.5 \u2B50</p>`;
|
|
});
|