[ About Our London Lives ]
1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.
Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.
Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.
[ My Review ]
Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey published in 2024 with Atlantic Books and is described as ‘dark and brave…offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.’
I never went to London in my twenties so I have no personal experience of the raw, exciting and challenging times so often described by many of the Irish diaspora. Via word of mouth and other sources I have heard stories of hardship and loneliness but also of funny anecdotes and warm memories from those youthful and heady days.
In Our London Lives Christine Dwyer Hickey very much brings this period alive through the eyes of Milly and Pip. In 1979 Milly left her home in rural Ireland with no money and no plan. At seventeen years of age, she was frightened but could see no other way to move forward with her life. She was fortunate enough to gain employment, and a bedroom, in a pub with an accommodating landlady who, in her own way, looked out for Milly. Initially Milly was very much overwhelmed by the colours and sounds of London. With trepidation she navigated her way through the local streets in awe of the people, the food and the cacophony of noise that surrounded her. Milly was very shy, blushing at a slight or a compliment but the customer base in the pub welcomed her, allowing her slowly develop confidence and set down her stall there.
Pip was of Irish extraction and was a young man on the cusp of a great boxing career but he was angry and this anger lead him toward alcohol to numb his thoughts and his feelings. Underneath the anger there was a pain, an isolation that Milly sensed. She was attracted to Pip from the outset but was convinced he was way out of her league. As the days and months pass, she got to know Pip. He recognised a kindred spirit, an Irish person in London in the 1970s/1980s and they developed a slow-building relationship that would eventually span decades.
In 2017, Pip is now out of rehab and returns to the familiar streets of his youth. He moves in with Dom, his older brother, but theirs is a fractured dynamic so tensions are rife from the off. Pip is doing his best to stay away from the demon drink, keeping himself busy and making attempts to go to his AA meetings. Meanwhile Milly finds herself in a fragile situation with the potential of soon becoming homeless a very possible reality. Over the years Milly dipped in and out of other relationships but Pip has always held her heart, for good or for bad.
With this stunning and extremely affecting novel, Christine Dwyer Hickey explores the lives of these two damaged individuals. Her observations of the life of an Irish emigrant during those turbulent years is insightful and penetrating. Milly and Pip were both products of a stifled society that offered little solace or hope for young people who struggled with their lives. Losing themselves in the vastness of London was a potential escape but also it placed them into isolation and a never-ending cycle of guilt and regret.
Our London Lives features a wonderful cast of very colourful characters, of which the city of London is one. The addition of factual political and social events adds an authenticity to the story immersing the reader right into the thick of it. I absolutely adored this book and highly recommend for all. Oozing compassion and sincerity, Our London Lives is a bittersweet tale that captures the lives of Milly and Pip in the most sensitive manner. A stunning tale!
[ Bio ]
Christine Dwyer Hickey is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Twice winner of the Listowel Writers’ Week short story competition, she was also a prize-winner in the prestigious Observer/Penguin short story competition.
Her best-selling novel Tatty was longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award. She lives in Dublin.
[ Photo ~ Deirdre Power ]
I adored this one! So glad you enjoyed it.
Susan i bought it at the time but never got to it until now. A truly gorgeous book. My heart!!