I thought I wasn’t going to be able to take part in Kaggsy and Simon Stuckinabook‘s latest year challenge, the 1956 Club, as I didn’t have any books from the year in question on my TBR, which is the self-imposed rule I’ve been applying to all my challenges this year again, but then a chance noticing of a title mentioned led me to my fiction shelves, where I found this slim volume I thought I could fit in, seeing as I was on a week off work. And I did!
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to use the special image for the Club, but I just can’t save it in a format where it will upload here. I’ve had the same problem with other logos for challenges. Not a New WordPress Blocks issue as I’m editing in the old editor right now. So here’s a photo of my rather dishevelled copy from the 1980s which my local library discarded and I snapped up.
Sam Selvon – “The Lonely Londoners”
(17 September 2007 – my original review says it was from a local charity shop, and it’s a withdrawn-from-circulation library book)
I last read this book in January 2008 and did a not very detailed review here. This is a tour de force of narration in a language blended from the voices of the people it describes. It has a loose structure behind its episodic nature and reflects the tangled and often chaotic lives of the early and subsequent emigrants from the West Indies to London.
We open with Moses going to collect yet another new arrival at Waterloo, bemoaning his own kind nature: he talks Galahad through is first days in the city and slips into remembering his own arrival, introducing a suite of characters whose stories are told alongside his, intersecting and moving away over time, all linked together in a precarious world of lodging houses, labour exchanges and manual labour jobs. The acquisition of trousers takes a major role; everyone is clever and careful in different ways, whether they’re self-reliant or relying on the kindness of others.
While the Americans are described as openly racist, the British are more subtle and “diplomatic”, the job having just gone as you arrive for an interview, the flat mysteriously already rented, assuming everyone who arrives from the West Indies is from Jamaica. Has this aspect really changed, I wonder? Cleverly woven into the text are mentions of discussions of the immigration situation in Parliament, that background we know for creating a “hostile environment” for the Windrush generation and their families.
There are comic and heroic passages, such as when the redoubtable Tanty, who was never expected to arrive in the first place but turned up in a family group one day, ventures onto the Tube and bus (having asked a police officer) after lording it over the Harrow Road, and a party that everyone turns up at, spinning the threads together then separating out as there are rows over who is dancing with whom. It’s very much a love song to London in all its grimy glory, treading those streets whose names people had only heard, with the characters saying they will go back to their green islands but knowing they never will. Moving and bleak by turns, and has much really changed?
I really enjoyed revisiting this book and am glad I was able to take part in the 1956 Club after all!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 07, 2020 @ 09:25:55
Lovely post Liz – and so glad you could join in! This is a book I’m really keen to read (I’ve had a look at the first few pages and love the way it’s written) – I shall bump it up the wishlist!
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 09:27:14
I’m so glad, too! Hooray! And I definitely recommend it, you’d love it, I’m sure. So absorbing. There are a few pages that are all one gigantic sentence!
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J. C. Greenway
Oct 07, 2020 @ 10:18:31
I’m reading this one too and loving the language! It does make you wonder how much has changed for the better and for the worse.
(Side note to say, the latest WP update is messing up the old editor and images especially. It’s caused me no end of trouble! Hope it’s fixed soon…)
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 11:18:45
Maybe it’s that, then, I can use my images but not anyone else’s. And the language is great, isn’t it – I’ll look out for your review.
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MarinaSofia
Oct 07, 2020 @ 10:28:25
I’m really keen to read this one too. And yes, the difference between the ‘polite’ English racism and the overt American one is very interesting indeed.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 11:21:04
It’s very well worth reading although a bit depressing.
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JacquiWine
Oct 07, 2020 @ 15:40:43
I suspect this would work very well as an audiobook, especially as so much of the power of the narrative comes from the rhythm of the language. It does sound like a great choice for the Club, particularly given the era!
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 17:18:29
With the right narrator, yes indeed. It’s very redolent of its era so a good choice although a slightly random one as the only one I had to hand!
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elkiedee
Oct 07, 2020 @ 15:55:17
Another of his novels, The Housing Lark, is a Radio 4 serial this week – midday and 10.45 pm, but it must be available on Sounds at the moment.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 17:18:46
That’s useful to know, thank you!
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Jane
Oct 07, 2020 @ 16:27:35
I love the sound of this, London in its grimy glory is a particular favourite of mine!
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 17:19:29
It’s so atmospheric; it’s the London of Iris Murdoch’s early novels, too, in a way, all seedy wanderings and odd pubs.
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Jane
Oct 10, 2020 @ 17:14:50
I’m meaning to do an Iris Murdoch re read so it’s all falling into place! I went to see the exhibition of Don Mccullen’s photography last year and it was a strange reminder of just how grimy London used to be.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 10, 2020 @ 17:27:58
Ooh fun, all of them in order? Do post thoughts on my reviews on here, I especially love hearing about rereading experiences!
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Cathy746books
Oct 07, 2020 @ 16:46:38
I do like the sound of this!
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 17:19:42
I do recommend it.
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heavenali
Oct 07, 2020 @ 16:48:11
Really glad you could join in with the club re-reading this book. It sounds excellent. These kinds of experiences in fiction are fascinating. That narration of blended voices does seem well done.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 07, 2020 @ 17:20:17
Yes, I was feeling really sad when I thought I couldn’t join in! It’s very good and there’s even a few pages that are made up of one long long long sentence!
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Nan
Oct 07, 2020 @ 20:48:33
Isn’t it wonderful that this book exists! Telling this experience from the time rather than now and looking back. Interesting about the Americans and the English. From what I’ve read it seems there is still a lot of racism in England and the virus has brought it out more. It all makes me so sad – in both our countries. However, the book sounds so good and so meaningful. Thanks. I had never heard of it. I rather like that period and should read more from it. I was 6 in 1956!
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Liz Dexter
Oct 08, 2020 @ 06:18:48
Yes, it’s an amazing historical record and set the template for writings about immigrants’ lives subsequently. I think the rise in racism more coincided with the Brexit vote and “legitimisation” of a narrative against “immigrants”; the pandemic has exposed systemic racism in the fact that BAME communities have suffered worse and it’s not genetic (as was claimed) but due to socio economic inequalities leading to overcrowded housing and people having the kinds of jobs that white middle-class people who can work from home don’t have to have – security guards and taxi and bus drivers have died disproportionately. People claim there isn’t racism here but it just takes different and possibly less overt forms, also the balance of demographics is slightly different in the US and UK.
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The 1956 Club: The Lonely Londoners and Night | Bookish Beck
Oct 08, 2020 @ 07:00:58
Deb Nance at Readerbuzz
Oct 08, 2020 @ 11:41:28
Oddly timely, too. I was born in 1956, so I was determined to take part in this event. It’s a surreal feeling, to read books your mother and grandfather and aunts and uncles and other adults may have read as you were developing and growing toward birth. It sounds like an intriguing read, almost a feeling of time travel when you read an older book like this.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 08, 2020 @ 13:17:45
Oh, that’s great, your year! Yes, I read a lot of older books and often think of all the generations who have read them before.
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Con
Oct 08, 2020 @ 19:00:31
I’ve never heard of this but it does sound interesting. I remember as a child being very startled by how biased Enid Blyton was about Americans (although we buy books too!).
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Liz Dexter
Oct 08, 2020 @ 19:36:02
Interestingly, here the preference is for the more honest Americans who state their racism rather than hiding it behind mealy mouthed words like the British! So not that simple … And thank you for visiting and commenting on my blog!
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buriedinprint
Oct 09, 2020 @ 14:58:13
Earlier this year I had a set of DVDs from the library on Writers & Ideas, a series of TV interviews with writers like Amis and Ballard and the like, and Sam Selvon, of whom I’d never heard…so I immediately put everything I could find on my TBR and was tickled to see that this one fit with the event (but I couldn’t borrow it from the library to participate with it, so it was nice to see others reviewing it instead). I love ensemble-cast novels like this. Racism in Canada is often as it’s been described here, underhanded and deceitful, all while espousing to be open-minded and open-hearted.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 10, 2020 @ 11:23:23
Oh, that’s interesting, thank you for that data point there. I hope you can get hold of a copy at some stage. And that sounds like a good series!
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buriedinprint
Oct 13, 2020 @ 15:36:04
OH, I neglected to mention that it’s an older BBC series, so you’ve probably seen it at some point. I remember years ago, when it was on TV, well over a decade ago, maybe even two, and an English friend was watching it on the “telly” with her family. (In the days when you pretty much watched what was on, because “on demand” wasn’t a thing.)
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Liz Dexter
Oct 13, 2020 @ 15:45:47
Oh I might well have in that case. And yes, funny to think of that, isn’t it. About the only thing we watch “live” is Great British Bake-Off!
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integratedexpat
Oct 10, 2020 @ 17:43:53
This has been on my radar since the Guardian Reading Club discussed it in October 2018, including an article about the language used (https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/oct/16/how-the-lonely-londoners-extends-the-novels-language). I just looked up Sam Selvon and was surprised to discover he was of Indian descent rather than Afro-Caribbean like the man on the cover that I have seen pictured.
My book blog: https://marketgardenreader.wordpress.com
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Liz Dexter
Oct 11, 2020 @ 05:06:07
That is an interesting article, thank you for sharing. And yes, there were and are a lot of people in the Caribbean with South Asian heritage, see for example V.S. Naipaul who was from Trinidad and Tobago – their families often arrived as indentured labourers. The book is very good. And thank you for the link to your book blog!
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integratedexpat
Oct 11, 2020 @ 09:00:30
You’re welcome. I might start adding the link to my book blog every time I comment on a book blog because WordPress always uses Integrated Expat as the link, so the only people who ever visit Market Garden Reader are people googling the more obscure books I’ve read like An African in Greenland and Forged in Fury (the latter of which I haven’t even read!). I’m sure there must be a way to comment using a different persona; I should investigate. I need to become more efficient and add more reviews to my blog and to Goodreads, for that matter; I have a huge backlog. Also, I read V.S. Naipaul’s Guerillas last year (but have only reviewed on Goodreads), so I should have thought of that! Unfortunately, it wasn’t written in 1956; his first book was published a year later.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 11, 2020 @ 16:12:38
Hm, I changed my link from my work blog to this one but I don’t know how to comment under different personas.
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#1956Club – Blundering around the bookcase: finding books published in 1956 – Market Garden Reader
Oct 12, 2020 @ 02:38:29
Simon T (StuckinaBook)
Oct 12, 2020 @ 14:38:37
Gosh, sounds interesting, and sad that some aspects haven’t changed at all.
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Liz Dexter
Oct 12, 2020 @ 17:47:37
It was a lovely read but yes, pretty dispiriting in terms of how long ago it was and how much hasn’t changed.
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