The Slaves of Solitude

by Patrick Hamilton

Book Overview

As World War II drags on, the lonely Miss Roach flees London for the dull but ostensible safety of a suburban boarding house in this comically rendered "masterpiece" from the author of Gaslight (The Times Literary Supplement)

England in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590172205
• ISBN13: 9781590172209
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.8" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

"It was [to be] war to the death--malignant, venomous, abominable, incessant, irreversible."

A "criminally neglected British author," Patrick Hamilton wrote nine novels from the 1920s through the early 1950s, along with the famous dramas of ROPE and GASLIGHT, and though he earned the admiration of a host of famous authors, from Graham Greene and Doris Lessing to Nick Hornby, he never achieved the popular success he deserved, either in his own time or throughout the twentieth century. In this decade, however, virtually all his novels have been reprinted in both Europe and in the US, and he is finally beginning to be recognized for his astute observations about his times and for his insights into the minds of his characters. In this novel, set during the Blitz in 1943, he concentrates on Miss Roach, a woman of thirty-nine who is a secretary for a London publisher by day, and a commuter at night to the Rosamund Tea Room, a boarding house in Thames Lockdon, far from the bombings of London. Here, she and her fellow boarders take their meals and try to live "normal," peaceful lives. One of the long-time residents of the house, however, subjects newcomers to psychological warfare, similar to the real war they are trying to escape. Miss Roach, new to the residence, has become the focus of an ongoing attack by Mr. Thwaites, a man in his sixties, "a lifelong trampler on the emotions of others" who regards mealtimes as "torturing time." As a result, Miss Roach lives in "plain fear, fear of life, of herself, of Mr. Thwaites, of the times and the things into which she has been born, and which boomed about her and encircled her everywhere." When Miss Roach meets American lieutenant Dayton Pike, who has recently had dinner at the Rosamund Tea Room, she and he become friendly, and her life changes. "Her" lieutenant enjoys kissing her, taking her to the local bar, providing her with "gin and french," and even talking generally about marriage. The arrival of Vicki Kugelmann, a German-born friend, turns her life upside down. Vicki "plays" on Mr. Thwaites--and Miss Roach's lieutenant--drinking to excess, joining them at the bar, using slang that Miss Roach finds coarse and common, and even calling Miss Roach not-so-joking names to her face. Miss Roach now hates her, imagining her cheering in Hitler's stadiums, and concluding, "It was [to be] war to the death...' Patrick Hamilton's sense of satire and natural wit turn the Rosamund Tea House into an ironically depicted microcosm of 1943 life. Here he lays bare the inner lives of his characters, not through interior monologues but through their behavior, their revealing conversations, and their interactions with others. No character recognizes that any other character might inhabit a completely different inner world from the world that is visible in day-to-day behavior. All of them are seen as "slaves of their own solitude," and in their lonely lives, shown in poignant detail, they become sympathetic--and human--rather than truly laughable. Hamilton's ability to create sympathetic characters

A dance

Life shouldn't have to be negotiated at every turn, but it is. The neighbors who play music simply to unhinge your sanity; the colleague who seems to sneer when passing you; the "friend" who constantly patronizes; the dinner parties that send you home feeling bruised and porous. If this sounds like your world, then SLAVES OF SOLITUDE is an excellent choice.

Well-written and engaging...

This was my first Hamilton work, and I found it to be well-written and engaging. The characterization is terrific. It was a perfect weekend read and I plan to try another of his works.

Sharing Solitude

The Slaves of Solitude (New York Review Books Classics) Patrick Hamilton's work is gaining attention as a result of a 2007 publication of The Slaves of Solitude by The New York Review of Books. Originally published in 1947, it tells the story of residents in a boarding house in a small village located on a train line to London. Although they share the same dining room and lounge, the characters live their lives in solitude, limited by the conditions imposed on civilians by 1943 World War II. The distinguishing factor is the insight of the players that ranges from minimal to obsessive. This is a very engaging novel that immerses the reader in the era, location, and interaction of the characters. Readers are confronted by their own solitude and learn that insight is the result of sharing experiences with others. Hamilton's novel shows that war prevents isolation but encourages people to explore their solitude.

Tempest in a Tearoom

The most atypical of Patrick Hamilton's novels (and perhaps the most beloved), THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE takes place in a suburban boarding house in 1943 where the heroine Miss Roach--intelligent, lonely, and on the cusp of middle age--has moved to escape the dangers of the Blitz. Commuting from the publishing house where she reads manucsripts in London, she spends her nights wandering the deserted unlighted streets, necking in parks with American soldiers, and being bullied at dinner by the sly and pompous autocrat of the dining room, Mr. Thwaites, another lodger at the Rosamund Tearoom where most of the action is set. This beautifully constructed little novel perfectly captures the mood of its time. It also anticipates the fascination with the alienation common among shabby-genteel boarding houses and pension-hotels that emblematizes the dilapidated middle-class culture of the UK in the twenty-five years after the war (as in Terrence Rattigan's SEPARATE TABLES or Elizabeth Taylor's MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT). The novel is in many ways exploring the nature of war itself on a figurative level, but it also first and foremost a comedy. Miss Roach's boarding-house nemeses, the sinister and German-born Vicki Kugelmann and the splenetic Mr. Thwaites, are so memorably awful and unpleasant they win the reader's heart immediately; Mr. Thwaites, in particular, is so beautifully drawn as to equal the best comic secondary creations of Dickens or Austen. The novel touches upon all kinds of tricky ideas about paranoia and consciousness that a clever reader might be interested in teasing out further, but simply as a comedy of manners this novel is a pure tonic.