“That first time, she barely saw him at all.” So begins Our London Lives, the sprawling yet intimate new novel from the award-winning Irish writer Christine Dwyer Hickey. She is Milly, a teenage runaway from County Louth recently arrived in London in search of a fresh start. He is Pip, an aspiring young boxer usually found in Mrs Oak’s pub in search of a fresh whiskey. When Milly secures a job in the pub, their paths inevitably cross, forging a tumultuous bond – and a tumultuous novel – that spans more than 40 years.
With the large passage of time and alternating points of view, the book is initially reminiscent of David Nicholls’s One Day or even Sally Rooney’s Normal People. And yet it soon becomes clear that Our London Lives is not a love story – or at least, not in the traditional sense. For one, the central characters only ever enjoy a brief, ill-fated romance (the consummation of which is sadly omitted). For another, while Milly’s chapters begin in 1979, Pip’s commence in 2017. Now a recovering alcoholic who hasn’t spoken to Milly in decades, he is released from prison, charged with finding his way in a city he no longer recognises.
If anything, London is the novel’s real heartbreaker. Dwyer Hickey richly conjures all that can be good about the capital – the beauty, the vibrancy, the diversity, the sense of possibility, the bustling markets with “the smell of plastic and hair oil and sweat. And endeavour”. She also documents all the ways London can let people down – the unfriendliness, the expense, the violence, the hollowing out of community and history in the face of capitalist redevelopment (“Today it looks like a film set of how London likes to be seen from afar”). The novel captures brilliantly the creeping impact of gentrification and the experience of those who fall through the cracks during society’s so-called progress.
Against the backdrop of this dynamic cityscape we are offered vignettes from Pip and Milly’s lives – births, marriages and deaths; quiet moments of solace and brutal glimpses of addiction and abuse. These are punctuated by real-world events – the funeral of Ronnie Kray causes a flurry of excitement in Mrs Oak’s pub, while various IRA bombings contribute to the growing anti-Irish sentiment Milly has to endure. Later, in one of the novel’s most powerful sequences, Pip – now crashing in his brother’s west London house – wakes one night to the smell of burning. He worries his stoner nephew has left something on the hob, only to emerge into the street and be told by a shellshocked woman in a hijab: “Grenfell, it’s called. Grenfell.”
Dwyer Hickey’s last novel The Narrow Land likewise blended fact and fiction with a vivid sense of place, following artists Edward and Jo Hopper over the course of a single Cape Cod summer. An astounding book whose propulsive energy built towards a wonderfully climactic set piece, it won the Walter Scott prize and earned Dwyer Hickey the kind of attention she has so long deserved. In many ways Our London Lives feels more akin to Dwyer Hickey’s earlier work, in which flawed individuals look back over their lives, reflecting on the choices they made and the chances they missed. There may not be the same driving energy, but there are plenty of tender moments and a whole cast of characters for whom we care deeply, offering an affecting portrait of the Irish diaspora experience.
• Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey is published by Atlantic (£20). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
