Make Mine a Double

posted by Arty on Mar 28

Drinking takes a quite a prominent role in quite a lot of really good fiction, but literature rarely shows the good side of alcohol. Take Ernest Hemingway’s fiction for an example. A lot of Hemingway’s stories centre on drink-fuelled travels in Europe where alcohol seems to play the part of an extra character.

Patrick Hamilton’s novels set in London are also heavy with drink and they are particularly worth reading to get a glimpse of the alcoholic underbelly of some of the fashionable districts of the capital during and after the Second World War.

These are novels that show alcohol in quite an important light. The drinking adds to the stories and is never gratuitous or indicative of lazy writing. Unfortunately, alcohol is all too often portrayed in fiction as being completely one-dimensional and in cheap, shallow, modern novels it’s invariably a vehicle for abusive parenting.