The Slaves of Solitude

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but she would find that her friend was duplicitous and self-serving, and that she would play up to Mr Thwaites to torment Miss Roach even more. Mr. Prest has a resonant and beery voice, and a face of that pugilistic cast which is acquired by certain music hall comedians as well as pugilists: it is almost as though they bears the marks of eggs, vegetables, and dead cats thrown at them on Saturday nights in their strenuous past.” It was difficult to ascertain whether the force motivating the old man was actually desire or vanity. There was probably something of both. And one more thing, again as pointed out in the introduction, this novel defies classification. Written in 1947, it's neither modern nor post-modern; and is, it would appear, a one-hit wonder. And yet, despite it being so solidly rooted in the war, there's so much about this story that also feels strikingly current. Mr Thwaites, the Rosamund Tea Room's most universally loathed resident, for example, is a type you'll almost certainly recognise. Thwaites is a tiresome bully who is desperate to goad Miss Roach into political arguments in which she has no interest in participating, is fully convinced that anyone who disagrees with him is a Communist, and reads no newspaper other than the Daily Mail. He has 'further narrowed his mind by a considerable amount of travel abroad' and gleefully enjoys the horrors of war, listening to the news 'in the test match spirit'. If you've met a loud, blazer-wearing, retired middle-class UKIP-supporting pub bore whose attempts at being jovial always involve a deeply unfunny lapse into weird faux-historical language ('A fine morning, in Troth! And dost though go forth this bonny morn, into the highways and byways?') or vaguely offensive comedy accents ('I hay ma doots, as the Scotchman said ... of yore') you've essentially met Mr Thwaites. And like Miss Roach, you've probably gritted your teeth and nodded politely when you wanted to punch him in the face. Mr Thwaites is one of those types who secretly admires German fascism, but also hates individual Germans - 'for although Mr Thwaites in his heart profoundly respected the German people for their political wisdom, he was not the sort of man who could refrain from participation in any sort of popular chase when one appeared on his doorstep'.

And Miss Roach was a heroine worth holding on to, a quiet, intelligent decent woman. She hung on, holding her position under fire, while others crept around.Oh God, thought Miss Roach, now he was beginning his ghastly I-with-the-third-person business. As if bracing herself for a blow (as she looked at the tablecloth), she waited for more, and more came. Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.11 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000211 Openlibrary_edition

THEN: from Skippy Dies to Cat's Eye - now, here's a little goodreads trivia question for those of you playing the home game. What weird filament of theme/motif unites THESE two? Hamilton captures, beautifully, the narrow world, the thinking processes, the pettiness and the glories of his characters. Although in many ways this is a dark, sad book, echoing Enid's sad cry: Came into use, yes, but also misuse. Gaslighting is not bullying, and it's not lying, and it's not (just) mere manipulation even with malicious intent -- it's something more complex than that, which involves all three of: a) a power differential, b) deliberate manipulation, and c) an intent to undermine the gaslightee's grasp of reality and sanity by the gaslighter for the purpose of control or abuse or both. Many, many, many thanks to Doug H for recommending this one! In my opinion it is a perfect book, yes, a masterpiece, but don't ask me to tell you why. It's one of those books that is the sum of it's parts. It has some loathsome characters that you can't really hate too much. Other characters who are good, but you don't really like them very much either. The setting is a sad little boarding house just outside of London in 1943. (Please God, never let me have to live in a boarding house!) Ah' he said at last. `Don't I?....Don't I...Well, perhaps I don't...Maybe I thinks more than I says. Maybe I has my private views....'

Success!

There was a pause. Then Miss Roach, having thought it out, took up her cup of tea, put it down on the table, and walked towards the door. What else? I also like what the book says about people during wartime. How people behave when times are hard, how we react under stress and when everything we are used to having is gone. Everything once taken for granted can no longer be taken for granted. Life is in flux. Do we remain reasonable, calm and cool? What do you think?! There’s some potent stuff here about the devastation that war can cause, far from the front-lines. Society is caught in crisis, a hole blown in its sense of itself as surely as Miss Roach’s flat was obliterated by a bomb. She’s a refreshingly complex character in Woolgar’s hands: withdrawn but not naive, serious but not humourless. She’s more than the cliched ‘lonely spinster’. One one point of the novel was the clash of cultures between the American lieutenant (big, brash, and confident), with that of the English miss Roach (sad, weary and unsure). Individual change mirroring societal change. Slightly tougher to find as a theme (?) -- although I'd be very interested in more of this ilk -- but I'll point to Mrs. Dalloway as the premiere example and best comparable. TSoS is what happened to the ones who weren't invited to the dinner party, but made it through the war to find themselves in seriously compromised positions, without fortune, fame or connections to anchor them to their former class. Commonality of setting, and - to a very minor extent - the inner monologue.