He had a curious but ineraseable streak of providence, and possessed a certain sum of money in his bank. The mere existence of this anomalous hoard irritated her beyond measure, the more so inasmuch as she was continually being compelled to make use of it…His persistence and stupidity, exasperating and humiliating as they both were to her, were both necessary, and therefore the more exasperating and humiliating.
The plot revolves around a psychologically curious relationship between a man named George Harvey Bone and a woman named Netta. George is not much to look at, but then he’s also socially awkward and leans a little too far to the submissive for the taste of many women. And that is why the money thing is such an issue for her. On the other hand, Netta, in the words of the narrator, “looked like a Byron beauty, but she was a fish.” Of such complicated relationships are tragedies born.
Then blank. Complete blank until that awful crack in his head, and he woke up in Portslade. Why Portslade? How had he got there? Had he taken a bus? Or a train? Or had he walked? He looked at his wrist-watch and saw that it was five and twenty past nine – breakfast time. Presumably he had walked.
Of course, even a thorny and problematic psychosexual imbalance in a relationship can be overcome as long as something really weird doesn’t enter the equation. Something like, say, one of the parties is given to prolonged periods of amnesiac blackouts, coming out of a fugue state with absolutely no memory of what happened during that period. Alas, poor George; he doesn’t know things about himself that it would probably be good to know.
She was supposed to dislike fascism, to laugh at it, but actually she liked it enormously…She liked the uniforms, the guns, the breeches, the boots, the swastikas, the shirts. She was, probably, sexually stimulated by these things in the same way as she might have been sexually stimulated by a bull-fight.
The story takes place against the backdrop of the approach of World War II. But the coming war is just that; a backdrop. It is gender psychology that is the real focus and Netta’s extreme positioning of the female search for a provider becomes a commentary on the issues of sexuality and gender roles on a much broader and more mainstream scale. That Netta, though. She is one messed-up young woman. And yet, who is the villain of this novel?
“Are you all right, old boy? I’m sorry. I didn’t hurt you, did I? Are you all right?”
The horror is in the understatement. Of course, it is very difficult to acquire any sort of standard for such things, but if ever a survey of the most understated acts of violence which climax a novel is ever compiled, it should officially be declared a crime against common sense if Hangover Square is not found somewhere in the top ten; maybe the top five. It is the understated horror that clings as one closes the book and puts it away. The book is almost always put on a shelf long before the creepiness.
