The Slaves of Solitude - Softcover

Patrick Hamilton

4.08

2,640 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845294157 ISBN 13: 9781845294151

Publisher: Constable, 2006

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A welcome reissue of one of Patrick Hamilton's best, with an introduction by Doris Lessing.

The Slaves of Solitude is set in a wartime boarding house in a small town on the Thames. The Rosamund Tea Rooms is an oppressive place, as grey and lonely as its residents. For Miss Roach, slave of her task-master, solitude, a window of opportunity is suddenly presented by the appearance of a charismatic American Lieutenant. His arrival brings change to the precarious society of the house and ultimately, to Miss Roach herself.

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Review:

Patrick Hamilton was a marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected... I'm continually amazed that there's a kind of roll call of OK names from the 1930s, sort of Auden, Isherwood, etc. But Hamilton is never on them and he's a much better writer than any of them... [he] was very much outside the tradition of an upper-class or middle-class writer of that time. He wrote novels about ordinary people. He wrote more sense about England and what was going on in England in the 1930s than anybody else I can think of, and his novels are true now. You can go into any pub and see it going on. (Doris Lessing)

His finest work can easily stand comparison with the best of this more celebrated contempories George Orwell and Graham Greene. (Sunday Telegraph)

Book Description:

The Rosamund Tea Rooms is an oppressive place, as grey and lonely as its residents. For Miss Roach, 'slave of her task-master, solitude', a window of opportunity is suddenly presented by the appearance of a charismatic American Lieutenant. His arrival brings change to the precarious society of the house and ultimately, to Miss Roach herself.

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