The Lonely Londoners

The Lonely Londoners was Selvon's second novel, written in the first couple of years after he arrived in Britain from Trinidad. As you might expect, it deals with the problems and hardships of newly-arrived Caribbean immigrants in London: the difficulty of finding decent jobs and accommodation, coping with British people who hadn't yet learnt to live with people from different backgrounds, and so on. What you don't expect, though, is what Selvon does with this subject-matter. Never one to fit into anyone else's stereotype of what a postcolonial writer should be, he sets the squalor of immigrant life against the glory of exploring your youth and independence in a city like London. He turns it into a glorious, upbeat poetic celebration of show more London and of Caribbean individuality: imagine Damon Runyon writing Mrs Dalloway after listening to too many calypsos, or James Kelman if he were a few decades older and Trinidadian not Glaswegian, and you get the general idea, but you really have to read it yourself.
Like a lot of British writing of the 1950s, it's all rather misogynistic: it's a novel about a bunch of young men on the loose in which women appear only as disposable girlfriends or embarrassing mothers, but Selvon usually makes it pretty clear that he doesn't intend you to take his narrator's view of things entirely at face value. show less

The immigrant experience was never so well told as it is in this short novel. Furthermore the ability of the author to demonstrate that experience through his prose was so successful that I was reminded why I love reading. Set in London in the early nineteen fifties it provides an entry into a world that is both far away and familiar at the same time.

Covering a period of roughly three years, it has no plot but is picaresque or episodic as it follows a limited number of characters of the "Windrush generation", all of them "coloureds", through their daily lives in the capital. The various threads of action form a whole through the unifying central character of Trinidadian Moses Aloetta, a veteran emigré who, after more than ten years in show more London, has still not achieved anything of note and whose homesickness increases as he gets older. Every Sunday morning "the boys", many a recent arrival among them, come together in his rented room to trade stories and inquire after those whom they have not seen for a while.

The immigrants in this story are treated poorly with low-level jobs that are insufficient to provide for more than the most basic necessities. They live on the fringe of the host society that regards them with indifference or hostility. Throughout the force of race and color prejudice is shown in incidents and through conversations but always with a sense of the human comedy that buoys most of the Caribbean natives that populate the story. Moses who has been in London a while shares his experience with newcomers or tries to if they will listen to him.

Early in the story Moses meets a newcomer named Henry Oliver (nicknamed Galahad) who is just "off the boat".
"From the very beginning they out to give you the impression that they hep, that they on the ball, that nobody could tie them up.
Sir Galahad was a fellar like that, and he was trying hard to give Moses the feeling that everything all right, that he could take care of himself, that he don't want help for anything. So that same morning when they finish eating Moses tell him that he would o with him to help him find a work, but Galahad say: 'Don't worry man, I will make out for myself.'"

Galahad goes out and immediately gets lost, but Moses follows him and persuades Galahad to take his advice and get a job, but be sure to find a place to live close to where you work. The patois of the immigrants has an almost musical quality in its simplicity and lack of tense. As the story continues more characters are introduced, in episodic fashion, each with their own idiosyncrasies. Despite their differences, their newness and unfamiliarity with the surroundings they are able to make a home within the larger urban environment provided by the city of London. Near the end of the story they come together for a "fete", a celebration and dance. They are enjoying themselves and for a moment forget about the life they left in the Caribbean, the daily difficulties they face in London, and the loneliness that remains a part of their lives.

"The changing of the seasons, the cold slicing winds, the falling leaves, sunlight on green grass, snow on the land, London particular. Oh what it is and where it is and why it is, no one knows, but to have said: 'I walked on Waterloo Bridge,' 'I rendezvoused at Charing Cross,' "Picadilly Circus is my playground,' to say these things, to have lived these, things, to have lived in the great city of London, centre of the world." show less

This is a quick read once you get used to the language of the narration. After rereading the first paragraph a few times to get started, I ended up finishing off the book in one sitting. Driven by character studies and a cynical humor, the narrative works on various levels to illustrate and critique the state of a divided 1950s London society. Exploring the admirable and the questionable among a group of immigrants/exiles/explorers from the Caribbean, Selvon creates a journey through daily passions and humors. It is fast, engaging, humorous, and ultimately mysterious in where lines can be drawn for fiction and documentation, character and stereotype, narrator and author and character, and ironic illustration and objective tale. In show more short, the tale is hard to pin down, becoming more complicated with each moment the reader spends questioning, for theapparent simplicity here is deceptive. Selvon's created a smart careful book here---one worth reading for pleasure and rereading for fuller thought. show less

I found this at a Little Free Library and knew nothing about it. Although it was all in dialect, and I am sure I missed alot of meaning, I found it a really engaging read. It is less a novel and more a series of vignettes but they are very evocative. Although it is the story of West Indian migrants to London in the 1950s (the Windrush generation), I think it could be true of any of the other immigrant groups there today. It was funny and sad and very human and I really enjoyed reading it.

One of those books I stumbled on and was so pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this book. The style Selvon chose to write the book was easy to slip into and added so much to the tale of Moses and the Caribbean immigrants to London in the 1950s. The language puts this author up there with Anthony Burgess and Bukowski, and makes you feel like you are really there with the characters. Later on in the book, Selvon wrote a passage of narrative with no breaks nor full stops in it, that I found amazing, this time reminding me of Kerouac. Definitely an author of great talent. It was interesting to learn about London life in the 1950s - the black snot, the pound that could buy you accommodation, food and heat. Some of the characters really show more made the book - Tanty stands out by far - don't we all wish we had a relation like her? Little things, like the nickname "Five Past Twelve" because his skin was blacker than midnight. The plot was make up with descriptions of each of the characters and instances in their lives. I was highly entertained when they all got together for a party and diverged in one place. The atmosphere of the whole book was very funny, but you could feel an undertone on tragedy, very real. I sincerely hope to meet some of these characters again in later books. show less

Lilting set of loosely connected stories about the "boys", a group of West Indian migrants hustling in London in the 1950s. The central figure is Moses, a world-weary and cynical observer, who acts as a reluctant guide to new arrivals like Sir Galahad and host of occasional get-togethers to reminisce about life back in the Caribbean and daily stuggles in the UK. Not to mention the constant pursuit of women - or "skin" as they are related to. The misogynistic tones grate, but still it feels authentic to their voices. Racism is of course a constant battle, but also a sense of wonder at making their way through Trafalgar Square and Oxford Street and other epicentres of empire of the time. It gives a real feel of the 'Water' in the 50s. The show more language is brillant, poetic and full of slang. Most of all, the book is often hilarious as well as sad, and makes big impressions without labouring points. show less

This story of a loosely-associated group of West Indian immigrants in London is a fast and entertaining, but ultimately thought-provoking, read. Selvon makes a sympathetic portrait of the troubles that immigrants from the colonies face, written in an episodic manner that uses Trinidadian slang and irregular sentence structures. The dialect the book is written in is easy to get used to and really added to the narrative.

As a fan of British "kitchen sink drama" writing and film from this time period (late 50s, early 60s), I was very interested to read this book as "another side" of the famous emergent youth culture of the time. The second world war and postwar austerity hang heavy over the story (several characters are veterans), but as show more the characters cruise the streets of London ("liming") looking for girls and good times, there are some lighter moments as well. However, Selvon concludes by hinting that all their hearty camaraderie masks a pain that can never be assuaged.

In some ways the book reads similar to such works as Alan Sillitoe's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and John Braine's "Room at the Top," which critique the conformity and starkness of postwar Britain. ("The Lonely Londoners" predates both those books, interestingly.) The deep sadness at the heart of the book isn't that different from that which afflicts Arthur Seaton or Joe Lampton, though it's exacerbated by overt racism and prejudice. In the end, the "lonely" Londoners' pain is both specific to their time and place and universally human: the fear of our own powerlessness in the face of time:

"The old Moses, standing on the banks of the Thames. Sometimes he think he see some sort of profound realisation in his life, as if all that happen to him was experience that make him a better man, as if now he could draw apart from any hustling and just sit down and watch other people fight to live. Under the kiff-kiff laughter, behind the ballad and the episode, the what-happening, the summer-is-hearts, he could see a great aimlessness, a great restless, swaying movement that leaving you standing in the same spot." show less