Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner: The Room of Lost Things

[callmemadam]

Stella Duffy seems everywhere at the moment, whether appearing on The Book Quiz (what a wonderful laugh she has) or being interviewed by dovegreyreader. I’d never read any of her books before and I simply loved The Room of Lost Things. How could I not? It’s set close to my old stamping ground south of the river which, like Stella Duffy, I am happy to defend against regions north. I loved the geography of the book; loved travelling with Akeel from Blackfriars to Loughborough Junction or with the mad poet on the 345 bus. The setting is so real that you could go right now to Google Street View and take a virtual walk down Coldharbour Lane, where at some time each of the book’s disparate characters has business.

This is pure London, ever in flux, with old street patterns, old buildings, hidden rivers overlain by the modern lives of the current, temporary occupants. Old and new is rather a theme of the book; I was reminded quite strongly of Graham Swift’s Last Orders, set on The Old Kent Road. Robert Sutton is in his sixties, has lived his life in the same place and for most of that time has been running the dry cleaning business inherited from his mother. Now, he wants to retire and the business is to be sold to Akeel, an ambitious young Moslem man born in Bow. The relationship between the two men, the conversations they have over the cleaning and pressing and the back story of each which emerges are touching. There’s not exactly a feel-good ending but you can’t help hoping that in forty years time Akeel will be there, handing on the torch. This is a book about the city, a book to gladden the hearts of Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair. One of its most vivid characters, Robert’s mother Alice, is dead before the story starts but I rate this a life-enhancing book.

Comments

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

Was Stella Duffy the writer on the Mills and Boon programme last year? I must look out for her books.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I think so: currently ubiquitous. I've got another of hers lined up.

[ramblingfancy.livejournal.com]

Ok I'll put this on my "to be read" pile - sounds wonderful!

Your new kitchen (and indeed the whole cottage!) is so perfect! I'm still bewitched with rhubarb and custard colour schemes, and, as I have no walls to tile in the perfect Dorset cottage I shall have to make do with a top and slacks approximation of the glory of it!!!

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Happy to lend it to you!

So glad you liked it and I look forward to seeing the outfit:-)

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

Whoa, geeky link there. Not to mention a rhubarb and custard kitchen ... very 1950s British Railways ...

I like The Book Quiz (I particularly enjoyed identifying a poem that our current pathetic excuse for a Poet Laureate didn't know) but you could use Kirsty Wark's voice to grate concrete.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Give me a Routemaster any day! The kitchen is slightly retro, shall we say?

I like the Book Quiz because I'm so good at it, heh, heh. I couldn't believe the PL didn't get a Keats line straight away *when he's written a biography of him*. I'm usually wondering where Kirsty Wark found the strange garments she wears.

[lethe1]

Dovegreyreader's review made it sound very appealing and so does yours. Have placed it on my TBR list.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Good! Should be in libraries, I'd think.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

I like Stella's writing. She's very talented.

And she collects girls' school stories too! Even better.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about the school stories! She seems an all round good egg.

[susievereker.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Haven't tried Stella Duffy's books. Thanks for an interesting suggestion.