hangover square [patrick hamilton]

On one level, Hangover Square could be viewed as a cruel, neo-misogynist text, trapped in a repetitive rut. The protagonist, Bone, a schizophrenic, is fatally attracted to Netta, a femme fatale whose only objective is to exploit Bone for anything he can offer. She leads him on, takes his money, ridicules and humiliates him and unsurprisingly his thoughts turn towards revenge. Netta is far from a sympathetic character, and never becomes any more than two dimensional; the reader is given little insight into why she is like she is, what has turned her into such a malevolent soul. Furthermore Bone’s masochistic pursuit makes for a weak protagonist, one whose refusal to learn from his errors becomes more and more frustrating. 

On the other hand…. Hangover Square is perhaps a novel which is less interested in psychological veracity and more interested in recounting the kind of fever dream of the build-up to war. The novel opens on the eve of 1939. and Bone’s calvary runs parallel to Britain’s descent towards war. Netta and her sidekick Peter are both staunch believers in Chamberlain and the Munich deal, something which Bone despises. Hamilton clearly posits Netta and Peter as quasi fascists, potential Hitler sympathisers. They represent something rotten in British society. (There are echoes of Maclaren Ross here.) Britain itself teeters on the verge of fascism, a country where people have nothing better to do than get drunk and ride the hangover and get drunk again. As such Netta and Peter represent an amoral core at the heart of British society, which can only be excised with violence. 

To categorise Hangover Square as cruel or misogynist, as I’ve just done in the opening paragraph, is perhaps to miss the point. Because the cruelty is representative of its time. A time gripped by a fever, on both sides of the channel, one that needed to be cauterised and expunged. Once again, a writer seems to suggest that if Britain hadn’t had to confront a foe across the water, it too might have drifted towards fascism. Far from nearly destroying Britain, the war came just in the nick of time to rescue it.