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Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky A London Trilogy Author:Patrick Hamilton Before his death in 1962, Patrick Hamilton was equally known as a novelist and as a playwright. Today he’s mostly remembered for his plays Rope and Gaslight (and the movie adaptations of them). While Hamilton’s novels could not be described as thrillers, they share with the plays their author’s great skill at buil... more »ding suspense, turning his stories of marginalized Londoners into page-turners and earning him the admiration of contemporary novelists like David Lodge and Sarah Waters.
In Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, barmaid Ella nurses a silent passion for fellow-waiter Bob; Bob is infatuated with a prostitute named Jenny; and the unctuous Mr. Eccles has designs on Ella. A pub in a run-down section of prewar London is at the center of this three-part drama of three lonely people whose lives are set on irrevocable paths of tragedy by poverty, greed, and–above all–the undeniable need for love. Hamilton is remarkably attuned to the subtleties of desire and disdain as he details Bob’s descent into obsession, Jenny’s fall from innocent housemaid to jaded manipulator, and Ella’s dignified struggles to overcome her mean circumstances. Each of these stories enhances the complexity and richness of the others and shows that, for Hamilton, life presents no villains, no heroes, only humans engaged in the common and never-ending struggle for fulfillment. Contains the three stories, The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure, and The Plains of Cement.« less
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