Weekend Deviation – 1930s Recreations

Mentioning DJ Taylor’s study of the excesses of the wealthy in the wake of the Great War, Bright Young People, yesterday reminded me that I really reckon his recently published novel At the Chime of a City Clock is worth a mention. The cast of characters and 1931 period setting reflect directly a lot of the research Taylor got while doing Bright Young People and, clearly, his earlier biography of Orwell as well as, I’ll bet, a penchant for period writers such as Patrick Hamilton, Waugh and Greene. None of this is a problem for me and I devoured At the Chime of a City Clock largely forgetting Taylor had written it in the 21st century. Hopefully he’ll churn out more – it’s his best novel so far by far. As usual blurb below.

Summer 1931 in seedy Bayswater and James Ross is on his uppers. An aspiring writer whose stories nobody will buy (‘It’s the slump’), with a landlady harassing him for unpaid rent and occasional sleepless nights spent in the waiting room at King’s Cross Station, he is reduced to selling carpet-cleaning lotion door-to-door. His prospects brighten when he meets the glamorous Suzi (‘the red hair and the tight jumper weren’t a false card: she really was a looker and no mistake’), but their relationship turns out to be a source of increasing bafflement. Who is her boss, the mysterious Mr Rasmussen – whose face bears a startling resemblance to one of the portraits in “Police News” – and why is he so interested in the abandoned premises above the Cornhill jeweller’s shop? Worse, mysterious Mr Haversham from West End Central is starting to take an interest in his affairs. With a brief to keep an eye on Schmiegelow, James finds himself staying incognito at a grand Society weekend at a country house in Sussex, where the truth – about Suzi and her devious employer – comes as an unexpected shock. Set against a backdrop of the 1931 financial crisis and the abandonment of the Gold Standard, acted out in shabby bed-sitters and Lyons tea-shops, “At the Chime of a City Clock” is an authentic slice of Thirties comedy-noir.