1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.
Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another's sight, always on one another's mind, yet rarely together.
Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she's ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.
Dark and brave, this epic novel offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.
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Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey was published in hardback on 5 September 2024 by Atlantic Books. The paperback will be published in June 2025. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review.
This is a large book at over 500 pages in the hardback edition, I flew through it. I began reading whilst on a flight to Portugal and finished it the day that I arrived. There's something very special about the writing, it creeps up and drags the reader in. It is enticing and colourful and the characters are brilliantly created.
This is a love story that spans decades, but it is not a romance. It can be beautiful, and brutal. Heartfelt and heartbreaking. This is about real love, about real people, there are no hearts and flowers, it's passionate and intimate.
Our lead characters are Milly and Pip, both young, both Irish and both living in London. Milly has recently fled her home in Ireland and has taken a job as a barmaid in a back street pub. The landlady, Mrs Oak is a good, kind woman and whilst Milly has traumas and troubles to deal with, she feels safe in the pub. Pip has lived in London since his family moved over from Ireland when he was a boy. His older brother is a an up and coming musician and Pip himself is a promising young boxer. He is also a drinker, often a solitary drinker. He is a beautiful man, and as Milly serves him and watches him, she becomes more attracted to him.
It is inevitable that these two young people will eventually get together, but it's not a relationship that will last as they hoped. It is a fleeting experience, but is also the beginning of a friendship that will last for forty years, with many hurdles along the way. Both Milly and Pip will meet and marry other people, but both of them will hold in their hearts, those early days in the pub.
This is a large book at over 500 pages in the hardback edition, I flew through it. I began reading whilst on a flight to Portugal and finished it the day that I arrived. There's something very special about the writing, it creeps up and drags the reader in. It is enticing and colourful and the characters are brilliantly created.
This is a love story that spans decades, but it is not a romance. It can be beautiful, and brutal. Heartfelt and heartbreaking. This is about real love, about real people, there are no hearts and flowers, it's passionate and intimate.
Our lead characters are Milly and Pip, both young, both Irish and both living in London. Milly has recently fled her home in Ireland and has taken a job as a barmaid in a back street pub. The landlady, Mrs Oak is a good, kind woman and whilst Milly has traumas and troubles to deal with, she feels safe in the pub. Pip has lived in London since his family moved over from Ireland when he was a boy. His older brother is a an up and coming musician and Pip himself is a promising young boxer. He is also a drinker, often a solitary drinker. He is a beautiful man, and as Milly serves him and watches him, she becomes more attracted to him.
It is inevitable that these two young people will eventually get together, but it's not a relationship that will last as they hoped. It is a fleeting experience, but is also the beginning of a friendship that will last for forty years, with many hurdles along the way. Both Milly and Pip will meet and marry other people, but both of them will hold in their hearts, those early days in the pub.
The author touches on just what it was like to be Irish in the 70s and 80s in London. How difficult it could be to be trusted, to get a job, to prove that you were not about to throw a bomb through a window.
The city of London itself is as much a character as the humans. Events including terror attacks, the death of famous gangsters and the devastation that is the Grenfell Tower fire are incorporated into the story, making it feel so real. As London changes and develops over the years, with the demolishing of old building, and the regeneration of areas, the reader travels the streets alongside Pip and Milly. Watching them change, just like the city.
This is a truly beautiful novel, written with compassion, featuring two very flawed people who each have to find their own way in life, as difficult as that can be for both of them. It can be dark, but it is always perfectly pitched. A wonderful read, highly recommended.
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She has published several novels, a short story collection and a full-length play. The Cold Eye of Heaven won the Irish Novel of the Year 2012 and was nominated for the International IMPAC award. Tatty was nominated for The Orange Prize and was listed as one of the 50 Irish Novels of the Decade. Last Train from Liguria was nominated for the Prix L’Européen de Littérature. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines worldwide and have won several awards, most recently the Irish Short Story Award at the Irish Book Awards 2017. Her first play Snow Angels premiered at the Project Arts Centre to wide critical acclaim. Her work has been translated into many European languages and is also available in Arabic.
Her latest novel The Narrow Road set in 1950 Cape Cod and deals with the marriage of Edward and Jo Hopper was published in March 2019 by Atlantic Books (UK)
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