This Lovely City by Louise Hare
A compelling mystery embedded in history with a poignant love story woven through its narrative; Louise Hare’s debut novel is a masterpiece in storytelling. This Lovely City charts the story of Lawrie Matthews – a postman pacing the streets of Brixton by day and touring Soho’s jazz halls by night – after his arrival on the Empire Windrush to a post-Blitz Britain defined by the aftermath of the war. Having fallen in love with girl next door Evie Coleridge, Lawrie dreams of their future together, until their hopes are compromised following his terrible discovery on Clapham Common.
Embroiled in a tangle of events that threaten to tear them apart, we follow Lawrie, Evie and their friends through a story of hair-raising twists and turns and watch as they are forced to suffer the appalling and often violent mistreatment from xenophobic locals and leaders. Through her vivid characters, Hare explores the depth of identity and citizenship, not only showing the racial inequality experienced by Lawrie and his friends as Caribbean men in an increasingly hostile city, but also through the prejudices Evie faces as the mixed race daughter of an unmarried white woman.
Contrasting Evie’s experience as a born and bred Londoner with Lawrie’s as a new arrival, Hare expertly portrays the blatant racism throughout, as well as the subtler more insidious undercurrent. Evie Coleridge’s relationship with her mother Agnes is a fascinating dive into the trauma and turmoil both characters have suffered and continue to contend with. Agnes herself is a deeply complicated woman, with an unpredictable nature, repeatedly appearing to resent Evie’s existence. In contrast with others (see DS Rathbone) who are immediately dislikable, however, Hare’s careful construction of Agnes also lends for a sympathetic reading of her character and an understanding of the isolation felt by her position as an outcast, bringing into question not only the inequality of race but gender too.
Despite the story’s complexities and often oppressive subject matter, Hare’s warm and lyrical prose makes for a rich and dynamic read. Its publication (March 2020) was particularly prescient and timely given June’s Black Lives’ Matter marches and the BBC drama Sitting in Limbo, that followed, based on 2018’s Windrush Scandal.
A brilliantly executed historical novel, with a tender love story at its heart, This Lovely City is marked by endurance and hardship, yet shows, despite scars of the past and conflicts of the present, there is always hope for the future.