The other incredible thing about this is the setting on the eve of war. It was published in 1945 and the sense of ominous build up, stressed waiting, then the increasing terror of May 1940, Dunkirk, and the Blitz are brilliantly atmospheric, but also extremely realistic in the different ways people deal with the stress--panic, denial, jokes, living from news bulletin to news bulletin, rising to the occasion or looking to exploit it. Life goes on: Mr Josser retires from his city office and wants to remove to the country; Doris Josser, the daughter of the house, leaves home to live with her posh (well, posher) friend Doreen; Connie’s Mayfair night club is raided (fourteen days without option); pursued by the threadbare Squales, the landlady Mrs Vizzard consoles herself with the thought that ‘it wasn’t as though he were a failure ... he just hadn’t succeeded yet’ and succumbs to his manifestly romantic, but latent materially conniving, advances – at least until he abandons her (almost on the eve of their wedding) for the wealthier Mrs Jan Byl, one of his clients whom he meets at a séance. London Belongs to Me (also known as Dulcimer Street) is a British film released in 1948, directed by Sidney Gilliat, and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, which was also the basis for a seven-part series made by Thames Television shown in 1977. felt mildly annoyed by Alex's choices; for much of the book, she didn't even attempt to combat her mental and ( mostly) physical opponents Alex's anxiety and the situations she ended up in actually made me feel anxious. Not Illuminae level anxious but still pretty bad.

Alex is such a sweet and geeky person and despite struggling a lot in her first months in London, she somehow never loses hope and fights for her dream of becoming a playwright. I really enjoyed her geekiness for theatre and pop culture and I love how she admires strong female characters and also writes about them in her plays, though Alex herself has some problems becoming one herself. At times, she seems really insecure about her talents, which leads to her getting pushed around All in all, it is such a sweet and heartwarming story about a girl finding her place in the world and I think many can relate to that. If you enjoyed London Belongs to Me, you might like Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. The lodgers are quite a cast of characters. We have the dependable Jossers, the food obsessed Mr. Puddy, the older washed out actress, Connie, the doting mother Mrs. Boon and her son, Percy- a dreamer, who wants to make it big, and Mrs Vizzard, the landlady who falls under the spell of Mr. Squales. When tragedy strikes, the residents pull together and find they can rely on each other.

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The writing style: It's full of descriptions. There is a lot of attention to detail, which I highly appreciated. I also didn't love how when things would go wrong there was almost always a neatly wrapped up answer to the problem. When Alex had to move out, conveniently her friends apartment opens up instead of having to get a better job that she should have been looking into and figuring out something on her own. Or when her computer is broken, well here's a new one for Christmas three days later. An old dress worn once before has to be worn again on New Years, nope here's that new dress you wanted, etc, etc. Life isn't always wrapped up so easily in little red bows and I wish every time something went wrong in this book it wasn't solved so conveniently. Many novelists make a whole song and dance about portraying the inner brains of their characters. Not Norman. He has the lightest touch. He flits effortlessly from Connie, the aged desperately poor ex-actress, to Percy Boon, the young motor mechanic on the make, whose Dreadful Crime forms the main arc of the novel. He’s really good on the various stages Percy’s all-too-credible self-centredness, from pre-crime, to during crime, to the long consequences of the crime, details of which I should not mention. This was written in 1945 and is a sprawling soap opera of a book, detailing the lives of the inhabitants of one london house, the ficional 10 Dulcimer Street.

The plain fact is that there's been too much happening for Percy to be remembered. And, if you must know, Percy was never as important as he thought himself. Desde el momento en que comencé a leer me sentí atrapada por la lectura, pero mientras más avanzaba en el libro más identificada me sentía con él. Alex es un personaje con el que te puedes identificar de una fácil manera. Sus amigos son la onda (yo quiero unos así!) Y Keegs!!! Mr Josser shook his head. So far as he and Hitler were concerned they seemed to get along without telling each other anything. London Belongs to Me concerns the tenants of a South London lodging house between Christmas 1938 and Christmas 1940. We are well beyond the halfway point before war is declared. Up until then we are made privy to the lives of one of the most vibrant sets of characters I have ever come across. Our familiarity with their domestic ups-and-downs means that when “the long shadow of war” finally catches up with them, and the young men start disappearing from the streets, it feels like an earthquake. a b c Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 354. Income is in terms of producer's share of receipts.

he) ... liked his chop or steak, his boiled suet roll or treacle pudding ... a whole cold pie followed by bread and jam, bread and syrup, or bread and fish paste ... the recurrent sadness of his single life was that boiled puddings no longer appeared on the table’.