Take a trip to the 1960s in the best Retro novels out now: THE LOWLIFE by Alexander
THE LOWLIFE by Alexander Baron (Faber £9.99, 256pp)
In the early 1960s, London’s Hackney was a seedy, rundown area of the East End with cheap boarding houses crammed with Jews, Cypriots and newly arrived West Indians.
In one room lives compulsive gambler Harryboy Boas, a single, Jewish war veteran with a love of classic literature.
When a couple and their toddler son move in below him, he’s reluctantly dragged into their complicated marriage and finds his gradual, touching relationship with the boy unearths traumatic war memories – causing his life of debts and violent gangsters to spiral out of control.
Harryboy is a memorable, tragicomic character in a vivid portrait of a time and place on the cusp of social and economic change. I loved it.
ONE FINE DAY by Mollie Panter-Downes (Virago £9.99, 208pp)
This short novel lyrically evokes the effect war has had on a small English village and, in particular, on one marriage.
It’s 1946, and Laura and Stephen live with their daughter in a crumbling cottage and unruly garden in Wealding, from where Stephen, after wartime service, commutes to the City.
He notices Laura’s prematurely greying hair and disorganisation, and pines for their previous life with gardeners and servants – a class now offered better opportunities in the new political landscape.
Change feels threatening, but, as the heat rises one summer day, both undergo a revelation that promises a new start.
Beautifully written, it’s also a tribute to the women who held everything together as their men marched away.
THE MORNING GIFT by Eva Ibbotson (Picador £9.99, 512pp)
The Morning Gift is available now
If you know Ibbotson best for her children’s books, this sparklingly witty romance will come as a joyful surprise.
Wealthy, attractive, biology Professor Quin Somerville is in Austria to receive an honorary degree when he learns a Jewish family he knew years earlier has fled rising Nazism for England. Except the daughter, Ruth, who has stayed behind.
He helps the unconventional, educated and passionate girl escape to London by marrying her, despite her engagement to pianist Heini.
What follows is a touching, funny, will-they-won’t-they drama, underpinned by historical accuracy born of Ibbotson’s own fleeing from Vienna under Hitler. You’ll fall in love with almost everyone.