London house prices are notoriously expensive. Many young professionals today have little hope of getting onto the property ladder without outside assistance. So it's fascinating to read Sam Selvon's novel set in the 1960s about of group of working class individuals of Caribbean descent who are fed up with their cramped, crumbling rented rooms in Brixton and hatch an ambitious plan to pool their money together and buy a house of their own. It's a good idea but this particular group of men struggle to concentrate and cooperate given their propensity for drinking, smoking and chasing women (or “birds” as they're often called in the novel.) They also often fail to support each other at crucial moments such as when one group member lands in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Selvon dramatises this tension well while creating a story that is so funny and witty that I felt totally engrossed by his characters' rambunctious conversations and farcical excursions. It's an invaluable portrait of a community in London at this time which was previously under-represented in fiction and it's no wonder that the writer Caryl Phillips commented “Selvon's meticulously observed narratives of displaced Londoners' lives created a template for how to write about migrant, and postmigrant, London for countless writers who have followed in his wake, including Hanif Kureishi and Zadie Smith.”
Selvon poignantly observes divisions within the community where people from certain Caribbean islands receive preferential treatment over others. The black rent collector is viewed as a traitor to his community. Also, it's somewhat shocking to read about the way this group of men refer to women in their casual conversation. Battersby dreams of women who can be physically changed to suit his mood by twisting their breasts. When they go after a woman they refer to her as “a thing” and a character named Fitz claims “I beat she like a snake. All woman want is blows to keep them quiet.” However, this blatant misogyny is undermined by certain scenes such as a sexist man who is quickly domesticated or conversations between women in the community who are facing their own struggles. And, crucially, it's the women around the men who come together to get things in order towards the end of the novel. The men in the group also make fun of each other for their clumsy attitudes towards women such as a character named Sly whose foolhardy method of trying to seduce white women is to chase after them calling “Cur-rey? How would you like a good Indian cur-rey?” because he assumes this is the food English women like best.
There are multiple scenes in the novel which are so funny and also give social commentary on British society in a style which reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's “Vile Bodies” or “Scoop”. One hilarious highlight in the novel is a trip to Hampton Court that was conceived as a moneymaking scheme for the group. The chaotic nature of their trip and the way the men reimagine the historic location as it was in the times of Henry VIII is uproariously funny. However, the humour is punctuated by serious observations. It's noted of a West Indian named Charlie Victor that “in fact he fooling himself that he just like any English citizen, loneliness busting his arse every day.” And when their trip comes to an end the tone changes sharply as the bus driver coldly states: “They should put the lot of you on a banana boat and ship you back to Jamaica.”
One of my favourite characters from the novel is a man named Gallows who lost a five pound note a long time ago and spends much of his time walking through the city with his head down searching for it. This sort of dogged but ultimately fruitless attitude pervades the tone of the book which makes these characters very endearing in how it presents their strengths as well as their faults. “The Housing Lark” is a brilliant comic story of London life like none I've read before and it's also humbling to daydream of a time when someone could buy a house in London for £20-£30K!
