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Craven House

By: Patrick Hamilton, Will Self - introduction
Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
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Summary

In Craven House, among the shifting, uncertain world of the English boarding house, with its sad population of the shabby genteel on the way down - and the eternal optimists who would never get up or on - the young Patrick Hamilton, with loving, horrified fascination, first mapped out the territory that he would make, uniquely, his own.

Although many of Hamilton's lifelong interests are here, they are handled with a youthful brio and optimism conspicuously absent from his later work. The inmates of Craven House have their foibles, but most are indulgently treated by an author whose world view has yet to harden from scepticism into cynicism.

The generational conflicts of Hamilton's own youth thread throughout the narrative, with hair bobbing and dancing as the battle lines. That perennial of the 1920s bourgeoisie, the 'servant problem', is never far from the surface, and tensions crescendo gradually to a resolution one climactic dinnertime.
©1962 Patrick Hamilton (P)2017 Little Brown Book Group
Classics Fiction Literary Fiction
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Critic reviews

"All his novels are terrific." (Sarah Waters)

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Life Behind Dull Doors

This was a riveting plot unfolded in leisurely fashion. Characterisation and interaction were sensitive and insightful. Hamilton has given us a full picture of the tempestuous life of a seemingly genteel establishment with humour and soul.

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