As for me I am currently reading Patrick Hamilton's 'Hangover Square: A Story of darkest Earl's Court'. Yes I have returned to London based fiction having read Vendela Vida's 'Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name' in a week! Too much snow for me I'm afraid.. So now I am following the love lorn George as he clicks his way round Earl's Court in pursuit of Netta. Set in 1938 it feels damp and dark. But will George ever get his way??
I started this book by coincidence during the week my City Dairy used a passage from Patrick Hamilton's 'The Slaves of Solitude'. Which because it has such resonance for so many reasons right now I quote below:
'London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the mighty congested lungs, held there for a number of hours, and then, in the evening, exhaled violently through the same channels.The men and women imagine they are going into London and coming out again more or less of their own free will, but the crouching monster sees all and knows better.'
Well time has raced by. I sat down at 6pm and it's now 9.45pm. I have missed Ray Mears and Doctor Who on Beeb 3... I suspect as experience tells me I need to sleep in readiness to be breathed in by that weird force tomorrow morning...only tomorrow maybe I'll be better prepared for the exhalation...maybe.
Let's hope I find some peace at least.
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