Hangover Square
Eine Geschichte aus dem finstersten Earl's Court
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
London 1939 - in der unerbittlichen Welt der Pubs in Earl"s Court gibt sich George Harvey Bone einer hilflosen Vernarrtheit hin: Netta ist kühl, voller Verachtung und - hoffnungslos begehrenswert. George treibt in einer Hölle der Trunkenheit. In seinen »toten« Momenten jedoch, wenn etwas in seinem Kopf »klick« macht, erkennt er ohne den geringsten Zweifel, daß er Netta töten muß … In seinem düster-komischen Roman »Hangover Square« evoziert Patrick Hamilton die heruntergekommene, rauchverhangene Welt der Pubs, Pensionen und versoffenen Philosophen - in einem London voller dunkler Vorahnungen in den Monaten vor Kriegsausbruch.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hamilton (1904 1962) captures the edgy, obsessive and eventually murderous mindset of a romantically frustrated British man in this WWII-era novel published in the U.S. as a separate volume for the first time. As the story opens, 34-year-old George Harvey Bone a heavyset, good-hearted failure is obsessed with his ongoing effort to either woo or, frighteningly, kill the lovely Netta Longdon, a callous, smalltime London actress whose charms seem limited to her physical beauty. Longdon shows little interest in Bone's advances, but she always seems ready to take advantage of Bone's generosity and to stab him in the back by, say, sleeping with one of his lowlife cohorts. As the book progresses and Bone gets more and more intense, it becomes clear that the virtual fugue state that he periodically enters is undiagnosed schizophrenia the twist is that everyone else's behavior is so beastly that Bone's plottings feel pretty much deserved. Hamilton is less successful introducing political material on Hitler's rise to power as the forces of war begin to overwhelm Britain, but the subtle power of the free indirect prose he uses to render Bone's deteriorating mind makes this an impressive character study and an oblique (and bleak) look at beleaguered prewar London.
