…the thought of maybe one day leaving the country and beginning again, back home, momentarily lifts your spirits, even though you know you are trapped in England. from Another Man in the Street by Caryl Phillips

Victor wanted more from life than cutting sugar cane. He had been a bookish boy who longed to be a writer. At twenty-seven, he left his home in the Caribbean for the England. He found a job at a bar, then lucked into a job as a rent collector for another immigrant with a tragic background. He began writing for a newspaper. It turned into a career. He gained a white, educated girlfriend (no matter that he had left a wife and child behind) who herself had left home for an imagined better life, becoming a secretary.

But in 1960s England, the immigrant dream of a new life never turned out the way one imagined. I tried to hold on to dignity, Victor tells his girlfriend, knowing “full well that all you people see is the colour and not the man.”

The story is told from different points in time and from the viewpoints of Victor, his boss Peter, and Ruth, who had been Peter’s love before Victor stole her away.

Victor finds those who are sympathetic to his plight as an immigrant. But the wider attitude is anti-immigrant, those who resent the influx of people from the colonies. As one character states, “The real worry for us Englishmen is that we’re bloody well running out of colonies…But you lot need us, don’t you? We make things all nice and easy for you, don’t we? Cheap passage to England, no questions asked. Loose women and lots of jobs.”

Our sympathy for Victor wavers as we learn his ruthlessness in his pursuit of bettering his life. It took a lifetime for Victor to realize what he had lost in England, yet his grappling with his choices at end of life redeems him in our eyes.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

This is a dark book, spreading tragedy and heartbreak amongst various principal characters. It seems at first that the book is about Victor, aWest Indian immigrant to Britain in the sixties, but no, we don’t really stay with or penetrate Victor’s character, instead just watch his suffering and failure. He is matched by Peter, another immigrant, but white and Jewish, a survivor of World War II’s racial cataclysm. Peter, however, wishes to find kindness - despite being a landlord who exploits the poor - and emerges a more benign figure than Victor. Then there’s the woman who links the two men, she herself a social victim who yearns to connect again with the child she gave away.
It’s all very sad but also makes for rather sour reading. The narration also isn’t linear, and becomes circular and repetitive instead. I’ve enjoyed Phillips’ work in the past but this novel I found too schematic and relentlessly negative. He’s a sensitive writer but this work, though empathetic, doesn’t wholly succeed.

A humane and compassionate portrait of people who have made their way to London in the sixties. The relationships of Victor, from the West Indies, Peter from Germany and Ruth from a northern town develop over the years, and the story of their complex lives, and how history has shaped, them play out through the novel. Phillips explores their unfulfilled potential, compromises and hopes, and in this novel, none of these characters are just “another man in the street”. Each has their dreams, but their past experiences permeate their lives as they try to reinvent themselves.

I would recommend this poignant and sad novel to readers who enjoy nuanced characters, and reading about sixties London through the eyes of newcomers.

Wow, I have a feeling Another Man in the Street is going to be one of the best books of the year. I can’t say enough good things about this book. It was awesome.