This Lovely City

Jan 6

This Lovely City by Louise Hare
Reviewed by Linda
📙📙📙📙

It’s the 1950s, London is recovering from the Blitz and people are rebuilding their lives whilst others are embarking the Empire Windrush en route to London for a new start. As the first wave of migrants from the Caribbean arrives in the UK, the reader follows the lives of a group of acquaintances and friends who settle in South London, including a couple in particular: Lawrie and Evie.
Lawrie, a postman by day and Soho musician by night, whilst navigating young adulthood in a foreign country, falls for the girl next door, Evie. The relationship isn’t without it’s hard-hitting challenges and as the young couple’s love blossoms amidst chaos, they are forced to grow up fast and leave their youth and innocence behind.

This Lovely City is a story of racial and social injustice and the circle of life and Hare excellently portrays this through a web of tragedies, secrets and lies which affect the small and connected black community in South London. A large aspect of the novel is centred around the treatment of immigrants by the police force - immigrants that had answered England’s call for help, only to be mistreated and ostracised by society. It really is hard to believe that the story was set in the 50’s and not in the present day.
Louise has written a beautiful debut novel about hardship and kinship - each chapter starts with a poignant Jamaican proverb which plays on your mind as you attempt to unravel the mysteries which lie ahead. I really recommend this to anyone who’s interested in post-wartime fiction. For me, this is an epic South London based book which has captivated my heart!

Fictionwomen writersimmigrant storythis lovely citylouise harehq storieslondon bookssouth londonwindrushblack womenblack historydebut authorsdebut novelLinda

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

This Lovely City

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