Dave's Book Blog: "The Lowlife" by Alexander Baron

Friday, 21 March 2025

"The Lowlife" by Alexander Baron

Harryboy Boas lives (mostly) by gambling. But when he makes promises he can't keep, he gets involved with people who want to hurt him.

This book took a long time to get going. The first three-quarters of the book is scene setting. It is set in the East End of London during the early 1960s when a row of slum houses under threat of demolition cost £200 each, when polio was rife and you could legally make money on the stock exchange through insider trading. Harryboy lives in a bedsit, a single room in a house with shared cooking facilities and a shared bathroom; downstairs is a mother, father and pre-school child.

The period and setting reminded me of a couple of slim novels by Wolf Mankowitz: Make Me an Offer and A Kid for Two Farthings.

We take a long time to explore how Harryboy lives, following him from dog track to horse racing, from eating in cheap restaurants to sleeping with expensive whores. We also explore the other characters, in particular the family downstairs, a downtrodden father, a house-proud and ambitious mother and their son, a manipulative child who seems to prefer Harryboy to his own father.

There is some cleverly written dialogue. Harryboy is a Jew and the speech patterns of his sister and brother-in-law and landlord are rendered by reversing sentence sequence as in: "A good wife I marry ... Can good ever come to a man without trouble? ... From me you got the tip ... A discussion now we're having about religion." (Ch 1) This gives a very distinctive voice.

This level of detail mean that the story is built very slowly, brick by brick, and if you're looking for a shallow thriller you'll probably find this book boring. But I was fascinated by it. It is written so beautifully and the characters are so real.

Selected quotes:

“We are carried to the grave on a stream of dead days and nights. we lived them and forget them.” (Ch 1)
“I wouldn't put a dog in that basement, and I hate dogs.” (Ch 3)
“I gobbled books like peanuts. How I didn't wear my eyes away I don't know. But a lowlife is a lowlife. I was losing money on the cards at fourteen, and going with my pals to shilling whores.” (Ch 6)
“Among the uneducated (which frankly is what you would call the general population where I live) the serious reader is a lonely person.” (Ch 8)
“I made the old excuse of sinners that I do know harm to anyone but myself. this is never true, as I was to find out.” (Ch 8)
“She was so determined to make this flat into a preview of the little suburban home of her dreams, that she had turned herself into a kind of domestic machine, which I could hear on the go from morning till night.” (Ch 9)
“Crying is a fine art with kids. They look at you, judge how much is needed, then start the performance. Sobs, pathetic whimpers, heartrending shrieks, pitiful moans, all these are let loose till you feel as guilty and miserable as if you've done murder. Then you give way and in an instant the tears have stopped, the child is victorious.” (Ch 9)
“The chain of lights, the unearthly floodlit green of the turf, the stir of people, the soft excited hub out of which rises the characteristic noise of the track - a yapping tumult from the bookies’ stands - it all goes on like a pageant.” (Ch 10)
“God? Excuse me, I don't know this gentleman. He looks after people? If this is his job he must be the biggest messer in creation.” (Ch 10)
“Man is a killer. I learned that in the war. It is all nuts about conscience. In Normandy I was with a bunch of steady, ordinary boys from respectable homes, craftsmen, clerks, ordinary boys, and they killed men like killing rabbits. Years after, I went to a reunion, and over pints of beer I heard quiet, ordinary fellows, a greengrocer, or waiter, a shipping clerk, chuckle with contentment and pride over their memories of this killing or that killing.” (Ch 20)
“You can forget a million children. You cannot forget one child.” (Ch 22)