Far from home

• Book: The Lonely Londoners
• Location: London
• Author: Sam Selvon

Review Author: Vasha

This book centers on a number of immigrants to London, mostly black West Indians. Most prominently there’s Moses, who starts out the book with a grumpy mood and a cynical attitude, telling a new arrival, “Though the boys does have to get up and hustle a lot, still every man on his own. It ain’t have no s— over here like ‘both of we is Trinidadians and we must help out one another.’ You going to meet a lot of fellars from home who don’t even want to talk to you, because they have matters on the mind.” But somehow Moses always finds himself showing people around, sharing his meals, lending money, helping out. The new arrival is Galahad, supremely confident and cheerful, meeting every experience as a grand adventure. Then there’s Captain, the smooth-talking Nigerian who lives high on the hog without doing any work, somehow always getting credit, winning over women, sponging his way through life; no one can stay mad at him permanently. There’s Bart, who’d like to live like Captain, but is too scared to; he’s in a perpetual state of desperation, unable to get money and women, holding on to anything he gets with a terrified grip. There’s Tolroy, who wrote home to his family that he was making five pounds a week (a low wage by London standards), and had half-a-dozen relatives show up, confident that he could support them and fix them up with jobs. There’s Tanty Bessy, who turns the Harrow Road into a piece of Trinidad with her social networking. And more. I have to say, the characters seem just a little “typed”, but the way the story’s told is vivid, and there are lots of interesting observations on the means of living in London.

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