The Slaves of Solitude
BY Patrick Hamilton
(New York Review Books, 2007)

The Slaves of Solitude^[8], by Patrick Hamilton is a novel set in Great Britain during the war when many Londoners abandoned their homes to wait out the bombing in country towns. We meet Miss Roach, a Londoner who has taken up residence in a small provincial rooming house where she is bullied by a fellow lodger, an eloquent and narcissistic man who pries into the most vulnerable spots of her fragile existence to ridicule her in front of others. Finally, when he drives her to desperate measures, she returns to London despite the danger and there we watch her discover her other place. It is a London Theatre at midday filled with children who are besides themselves with laughter as they watch the antics of a comedian on stage. We understand that laughter is what the war has stolen from Miss Roach. The children have abandoned themselves to it and nothing else exists for them except for the bumbling comedian on the stage.

“[T]here was no sign of any abatement in the excitement of the small mad people, the children, and towards the end a sort of frenzy and agony of laughter and hysterics came upon them.”^[9] This “agony of laughter” is so intense and extreme, so different from everything Miss Roach has lived through previously, that every drop of the healing madness must be wrung out of it so that the scene in the theatre, tucked into the end of the novel, becomes the other place she has, without knowing it, been trying to get to all along.

As deeply as the reader is involved in the everyday life of the characters, the other place provides a location for the narrative to get to, and once there, it explodes everything we’ve come to accept about the characters.

In all three novels, the other place establishes contrast. As deeply as the reader is involved in the everyday life of the characters, the other place provides a location for the narrative to get to, and once there, it explodes everything we’ve come to accept about the characters. It shows their other side. In The Known World, we see what must happen to a white man before he can experience the life of an ordinary slave. In The Beginning of Spring we understand that if Frank Reid is to get his wife back he must shed his habitual reserve, and invite passion into his life; in The Slaves of Solitude we see how the war has pulled joy out of the adults’ pale and barely breathing lives. But for the other place to fulfill this role, it must not simply be an abstract idea. It must be specific and concrete, though not fully disclosed. While the primary place is fully known and familiar, the other place is only sketched in. We are aware of something confusing or unresolved about it and understand that it has its own rules.

When the other place is handled in this manner, it creates these effects: it shows a previously unknown aspect of the character and in this way it gives the reader a glimpse of what that character needs or wants. It opens the story to a more complex reality by creating a contradiction within the character. And just as important, the other place, since it is not fully understood or disclosed, creates a gap in the narrative. This gap builds tension because it puts the reader into the position of a seeker of information. A reader who wants to know more is a reader compelled to keep reading.