Página inicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquise No Site
Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados do Google Livros

Clique em uma foto para ir ao Google Livros

Carregando...

London Belongs to Me (1945)

de Norman Collins

Outros autores: Veja a seção outros autores.

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
3431074,923 (4.19)51
With a new Introduction by Ed Gilnert 'The capital's great vernacular novel . . . a joyous romp through a slice of London life' Ed Gilbert It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mt Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lodger, a self-styled 'Professor of Spiritualism'); and flashy young mechanic Percy Poon, whose foray into stolen care descends into something much, much worse . . . With brilliant t deadpan humour London Belongs to Meportrays a world of seances, shabby gentility, smoky pubs and ordinary lives in an extraordinary city.… (mais)
Carregando...

Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Veja também 51 menções

Mostrando 1-5 de 10 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
Anticipating Colin MacInnes but with the word count of Dickens, London Belongs To Me is a sort of wartime soap opera about the lives of the landlady and five tenants of a South London house. There's a murder in the early chapters and the Blitz at the end - or what should be the end - but the characters are the real focus of the story. Collins writes about people in a timeless yet slightly comic style which means that they are both ordinary and larger than life. I didn't really get a sense of the pre/early war era in which the book is set, either, but enjoyed much of my stay at Dulcimer Street - a better editor, to crop around two hundred pages and pick up on characters with multiple names, would have made this a five star book for me. And on a side note, I haven't loathed a character like Percy Boon since having to endure Pinkie in Brighton Rock! ( )
  AdonisGuilfoyle | Mar 12, 2022 |
Heavily Dickens-influenced slab of London life covering the inhabitants of a Kennington rooming-house from Christmas 1938 to Christmas 1940. There are some funny scenes, especially involving the novel's best character, the spiritualist and con-man Mr Squales, who unwittingly possesses real psychic powers (which I thought ought to have featured more than just twice). However, most of the humour is very much of the "gentle" variety, as Collins affectionately steers characters like the bumbling, congestive Mr Puddy and the impoverished but optimistic Connie through a series of minor misadventures. The scenes from the blitz, which only get going in the last 1/4 of the novel, are very well done. The trials of Connie and Percy are also standout set-pieces.

The two downsides for me were the Dickensian nomenclature (Josser, Puddy, Squales, a barrister by the name of Veesey Blaise) and Collin's constant narration from within his characters' heads which, given they speak in rather similar voices, gives the prose a saminess that grates over 700+ pages. But that's the kind of book this is.

There's no grand scheme to this novel; it's just a well-drawn soap focusing on ordinary Londoners. I can absolutely see why it was a popular smash on publication. ( )
  yarb | Feb 12, 2020 |
London Belongs to Me had everything I look for in a book: well-drawn characters, a vivid setting, and interesting storylines. Throw in some history and I’m pretty well set. The novel opens on Christmas Eve, 1938, as Fred Josser is retiring from his long career as a bookkeeper. His entire adult life has been shaped by daily routine, and one can imagine he will have difficulty coping with retirement. Mr Josser returns home to celebrate Christmas with his family, introducing the reader to the other tenants of 10 Dulcimer Street. Besides Mr & Mrs Josser and their adult children Ted and Doris, there’s Mr Puddy, Mrs Boon and her son Percy, Connie the aging former actress turned hatcheck girl, spiritual medium Mr Squales, and landlady Mrs Vizzard. Each has a story that will play out gradually over two years and more than 700 pages.

The Jossers are very much at the center of this novel. They look out for their neighbors and seem to be involved to some degree in most anything that happens. This is not always by choice -- Connie has a way of putting her nose into everyone’s business, to amusing effect. But when Mrs Boon and Percy fall on hard times, the Jossers work tirelessly on their behalf, setting their own dreams aside. When Mrs Vizzard suffers a betrayal, Mrs Josser overcomes her natural reserve to provide comfort. And then there’s the war and its far-reaching impact on everyone’s lives.

This book makes for easy, relaxing reading, thanks to a pleasing rotation of chapters focused on the many characters, and ending with mini-cliffhangers that made me eager to keep reading to learn what would happen next. ( )
3 vote lauralkeet | Jun 6, 2016 |
It's a pity this book is so little known. A wonderful evocation of life in London at the beginning of WWII, seen through the eyes of ordinary Londoners living in a boarding house - a common occurrence at that time, very few people owned their own home, so it's interesting to see the Jossers planning for their little house in the sticks. ( )
  mlfhlibrarian | Oct 21, 2015 |
I've been telling anyone who will listen about this book. It is an incredible piece of literature - full of life, humour, pathos. It reads like a classic Ealing Film and it made me warm to London in a way I haven't before. All of the characters are beautifully real, from the landlady of the house that acts as the focus of the novel, to her crazy fiancé who pretends to be a medium without realising he really is a medium, and the perpetually resting actress who likes to be in the thick of everyone's business. The best characters, though, are the Josser family. They are every working class family from that era - resolute, principled, kind but not showy. I was sad when I had to close the book on them. I love it when characters become important to me like that. ( )
1 vote missizicks | Jun 10, 2015 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 10 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha

» Adicionar outros autores (1 possível)

Nome do autorFunçãoTipo de autorObra?Status
Norman Collinsautor principaltodas as ediçõescalculado
Glinert, EdIntroduçãoautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado

Pertence à série publicada

Você deve entrar para editar os dados de Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Compartilhado.
Título canônico
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Lugares importantes
Eventos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Epígrafe
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
London, thou art the flower of cities all.
William Dunbar
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Idioma original
CDD/MDS canônico
LCC Canônico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

With a new Introduction by Ed Gilnert 'The capital's great vernacular novel . . . a joyous romp through a slice of London life' Ed Gilbert It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mt Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lodger, a self-styled 'Professor of Spiritualism'); and flashy young mechanic Percy Poon, whose foray into stolen care descends into something much, much worse . . . With brilliant t deadpan humour London Belongs to Meportrays a world of seances, shabby gentility, smoky pubs and ordinary lives in an extraordinary city.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo em haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Links rápidos

Avaliação

Média: (4.19)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2 2
2.5 1
3 2
3.5 6
4 22
4.5 6
5 22

É você?

Torne-se um autor do LibraryThing.

 

Sobre | Contato | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blog | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Históricas | Os primeiros revisores | Conhecimento Comum | 203,239,770 livros! | Barra superior: Sempre visível