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The Lowlife
Harryboy Boas is a gambling man who loves the dogs. He lives in the quietly respectable streets of Hackney and keeps himself to himself. Until, that is, a new family moves into his building. Step by step, the ordered - if faintly disreputable and financially rackety - life he has led begins to unravel. He is drawn into a murky underworld where violence and revenge are the inevitable payback for those who can't come up with the money. A brilliant portrayal of a way of life in its last days in the 1960s.
167 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
Alexander Baron
104 books36 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.
Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
October 30, 2025
London style noir fiction… The Lowlife… A gambler… A loser… A deadbeat…
And what is the nature of a gambler? A true gambler keeps gambling… So there is no way but down…
The gambler talks about his life and his life philosophy… He boasts and lies… It’s a part of his gambling… Then he has new young neighbours and he befriends their five-year-old boy… He has great plans… They fail… Trying to help his fellow man he just sinks deeper…
Living a life of chance brings no happiness.
My story starts one night last year. It didn’t seem a night different from any other. We are carried to the grave on a stream of dead days and nights. We live them and forget them. Yet who knows on which dead day or night a terrible change can come into a life? A disease starts. The seeds of a crisis, a disaster, a great joy, are sown. At the time we are aware of nothing.
And what is the nature of a gambler? A true gambler keeps gambling… So there is no way but down…
What the hell do they know? – the punters who come to the tracks or pop into the betting shops for a giggle? Or the professionals who keep it all on a debit and credit basis? None of them knows what a gambler is. The gambler is the one who goes on with no peace, no release, till he has annihilated himself. I am a gambler.
The gambler talks about his life and his life philosophy… He boasts and lies… It’s a part of his gambling… Then he has new young neighbours and he befriends their five-year-old boy… He has great plans… They fail… Trying to help his fellow man he just sinks deeper…
My chest was full of that tight, hysterical strain of hope, but underneath it was a deep, deep, sickening pit of darkness, the knowledge of destruction. I stood in that shabby crowd against the counters, in thick cigarette smoke, and the unemotional voice on the loud-speaker taunted me.
Living a life of chance brings no happiness.
April 28, 2025
'My name is Harry Boas (Bo-as, two syllables, please). At the moment I have 30 pounds in the world. But I face the future with confidence'.
Harryboy lives in Hackney, post-war, London. Since the war, Harry has kept his life simple: he gambles, and enjoys his winnings or, he loses and does short-term work to make ends meet, until the cycle begins again. He wants for nothing and wants nothing more. 'I am a free man. All my life I have gone my way, and no one has managed to take possession of my life or make me responsible for theirs'. However, his diversionary lifestyle is seriously compromised when a couple and their young son move into his share-house. Despite literally slamming the door in the boy's face and purposefully ignoring them on his way in and out of the house, somehow their lives start to entwine. Somehow Harryboy is made to start thinking of more than himself.
'The Lowlife' is a lot of story packed into a small number of pages. Since, by nature, Harryboy is a loner, he is also an observer, his story paints a real slice of life of post-war East London during a real time of social change. Harry is a loveable rogue that you can't help rooting for despite his somewhat dubious lifestyle. I enjoyed this dip into what is now historical fiction but was written as contemporary fiction.
'And after all, you should never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finish line'.
Harryboy lives in Hackney, post-war, London. Since the war, Harry has kept his life simple: he gambles, and enjoys his winnings or, he loses and does short-term work to make ends meet, until the cycle begins again. He wants for nothing and wants nothing more. 'I am a free man. All my life I have gone my way, and no one has managed to take possession of my life or make me responsible for theirs'. However, his diversionary lifestyle is seriously compromised when a couple and their young son move into his share-house. Despite literally slamming the door in the boy's face and purposefully ignoring them on his way in and out of the house, somehow their lives start to entwine. Somehow Harryboy is made to start thinking of more than himself.
'The Lowlife' is a lot of story packed into a small number of pages. Since, by nature, Harryboy is a loner, he is also an observer, his story paints a real slice of life of post-war East London during a real time of social change. Harry is a loveable rogue that you can't help rooting for despite his somewhat dubious lifestyle. I enjoyed this dip into what is now historical fiction but was written as contemporary fiction.
'And after all, you should never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finish line'.
April 20, 2014
The Lowlife (1963) is the third book I have read by Alexander Baron (1917-1999) and follows King Dido (1969) and The Human Kind (1953). I am now resolved to read all his work - he was a renowned London author and very popular in his day.
His first novel, From the City, from the Plough (1948), was a best seller. It was based on Alexander Baron's own war service, fighting across France from the Normandy D-Day beaches. From the City, from the Plough was the first of a WW2 trilogy. Baron also went on to write many London novels which were similarly based largely on personal experience and observation and which includes The Lowlife.
The Lowlife tells the story of Harryboy Boas, a Jewish veteran of WW2, a gambler, a womaniser, a philosopher, and a man of integrity and compassion. All Harry wants is to be left alone to enjoy his solitary life: either - and when his winnings from the dog track allow him the time and space - to eat, read, and meet women, or - when he needs cash - to work in short-term jobs to build up more stake money.
Harryboy is afflicted by guilt. Guilt about his own dead child who may never have existed and who, despite this uncertainty, Harry believes may been killed during the holocaust. Harryboy consciously tries to get away from his family, his religion, and the expectations of others. His sister Debbie, who has moved out to the the respectable suburbs, worries about him and wants to see him settled down and financially secure.
Although Harryboy is a confirmed loner he gets sucked into the life of his neighbours at his boarding house, and in particular Vic and Evelyn along with their young son Gregory. Evelyn, with her middle class aspirations, is the antithesis of Harry, and she cannot bear Hackney or the boarding house she is forced to live in. Harry's involvement with Vic, Evelyn and Gregory is the catalyst for Harry's life to unravel spectacularly.
This is an extraordinary novel that explores East London, tradition, guilt, snobbery, social history, families, loyalty, sacrifice, immigration, property, desire, racism, pride and all within the framework of an original and exciting tale about gambling, debt, and gangsters. Another splendid book by Alexander Baron who is deservedly getting republished and rediscovered by a new generation of readers.
5/5
His first novel, From the City, from the Plough (1948), was a best seller. It was based on Alexander Baron's own war service, fighting across France from the Normandy D-Day beaches. From the City, from the Plough was the first of a WW2 trilogy. Baron also went on to write many London novels which were similarly based largely on personal experience and observation and which includes The Lowlife.
The Lowlife tells the story of Harryboy Boas, a Jewish veteran of WW2, a gambler, a womaniser, a philosopher, and a man of integrity and compassion. All Harry wants is to be left alone to enjoy his solitary life: either - and when his winnings from the dog track allow him the time and space - to eat, read, and meet women, or - when he needs cash - to work in short-term jobs to build up more stake money.
Harryboy is afflicted by guilt. Guilt about his own dead child who may never have existed and who, despite this uncertainty, Harry believes may been killed during the holocaust. Harryboy consciously tries to get away from his family, his religion, and the expectations of others. His sister Debbie, who has moved out to the the respectable suburbs, worries about him and wants to see him settled down and financially secure.
Although Harryboy is a confirmed loner he gets sucked into the life of his neighbours at his boarding house, and in particular Vic and Evelyn along with their young son Gregory. Evelyn, with her middle class aspirations, is the antithesis of Harry, and she cannot bear Hackney or the boarding house she is forced to live in. Harry's involvement with Vic, Evelyn and Gregory is the catalyst for Harry's life to unravel spectacularly.
This is an extraordinary novel that explores East London, tradition, guilt, snobbery, social history, families, loyalty, sacrifice, immigration, property, desire, racism, pride and all within the framework of an original and exciting tale about gambling, debt, and gangsters. Another splendid book by Alexander Baron who is deservedly getting republished and rediscovered by a new generation of readers.
5/5
April 13, 2025
I do love a boarding house novel. Harryboy Boas is living his own life.and trying to keep himself to himself. It's a rather seedy life of gambling, mainly. When he wins, he enjoys eating and reading, and the occasional visit to his favourite prostitute. When he loses, he will work to build up his stake money so he can get back to the track. All this changed when a new family moves into the boarding house he lives in. They have a young boy, clearly lonely, who befriends him and draws him into their family drama.
The characters are very well drawn, if infuriating. Harry is deeply flawed, haunted by something that may have happened during the war; he has never tried too hard to find out. History's mother Evelyn is desperate that the family better themselves and won't let her son play with the riff raff in the streets, and is hard on Vic, the father who isn't doing enough to get them away. All this leads to a bleak, but deeply compelling narrative.
*Many thanks to Netgally and Faber for a copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*
The characters are very well drawn, if infuriating. Harry is deeply flawed, haunted by something that may have happened during the war; he has never tried too hard to find out. History's mother Evelyn is desperate that the family better themselves and won't let her son play with the riff raff in the streets, and is hard on Vic, the father who isn't doing enough to get them away. All this leads to a bleak, but deeply compelling narrative.
*Many thanks to Netgally and Faber for a copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*
February 23, 2021
"Jugador" del autor británico Alexander Baron.🇬🇧
Páginas: 306
Editorial: La Bestia Equilátera.
Muchísimas gracias por el ejemplar: @labestiaequilatera_editorial
Reseña:
Harryboy Boas es un jugador, adicto a las apuestas y las carreras en el canódromo. Su vida es un declive ignominioso, pidiendo prestamos que no salda, lastimando a su hermana Debbie, que en sí es la única persona que le queda de su familia. Solo y miserable, rondando por las calles de Inglaterra evaluando tácticas para seguir apostando, su vida gira en torno a las carreras y no tiene ningún reparo en admitirlo. Si en alguna oportunidad trabaja es solo para seguir apostando, si alguien confía en él e intenta ayudarlo éste no tiene remordimientos en traicionarlo, si alguien le da dinero... ¡Pobre incauto!
Para la sociedad él se muestra como un importante vendedor de inmuebles ocultando su verdadera "ocupación".
Su existencia es estática y rutinaria hasta que aparece en su vida los Deaner, una familia que lo cambiará todo. ¿Quiénes son estos misteriosos desconocidos? Primero tenemos a Evelyn y Vic, un joven matrimonio de clase baja con ínfulas de grandeza, en búsqueda de un mejor futuro; luego tenemos a Gregory, el pequeño hijo irritante de la pareja. Al principio los cambios serán sutiles pero rápidamente el grupo abarcará más espacio hasta engullir al mismo Harryboy en su día a día, convirtiéndolo en el «niñero» gratuito del infante y pidiéndole favores. Poco a poco nuestro protagonista se verá acorralado entre tantas mentiras que dijo. ¿Podrá mantener en pié la farsa?
Como verá el lector, no es un protagonista fácil, tiene una personalidad muy marcada; por consiguiente es personaje muy bien armado, podría ser tranquilamente un ser de carne y hueso, alguien conocido y a la vez familiar.
La obra en sí no tiene un sentido moralista, sino más bien intenta que logremos entender a este ser humano decadente en su propio juego, esclavo del dinero y el azar; mostrándonos sus otros matices tales como su gran inteligencia y su voraz apetito lector, con lo cual pude conectar gratamente.
🌟La prosa de Alexander Baron puede ser una excelente opción para los admiradores de la pluma del gran Dostoyevski.
Páginas: 306
Editorial: La Bestia Equilátera.
Muchísimas gracias por el ejemplar: @labestiaequilatera_editorial
Reseña:
Harryboy Boas es un jugador, adicto a las apuestas y las carreras en el canódromo. Su vida es un declive ignominioso, pidiendo prestamos que no salda, lastimando a su hermana Debbie, que en sí es la única persona que le queda de su familia. Solo y miserable, rondando por las calles de Inglaterra evaluando tácticas para seguir apostando, su vida gira en torno a las carreras y no tiene ningún reparo en admitirlo. Si en alguna oportunidad trabaja es solo para seguir apostando, si alguien confía en él e intenta ayudarlo éste no tiene remordimientos en traicionarlo, si alguien le da dinero... ¡Pobre incauto!
Para la sociedad él se muestra como un importante vendedor de inmuebles ocultando su verdadera "ocupación".
Su existencia es estática y rutinaria hasta que aparece en su vida los Deaner, una familia que lo cambiará todo. ¿Quiénes son estos misteriosos desconocidos? Primero tenemos a Evelyn y Vic, un joven matrimonio de clase baja con ínfulas de grandeza, en búsqueda de un mejor futuro; luego tenemos a Gregory, el pequeño hijo irritante de la pareja. Al principio los cambios serán sutiles pero rápidamente el grupo abarcará más espacio hasta engullir al mismo Harryboy en su día a día, convirtiéndolo en el «niñero» gratuito del infante y pidiéndole favores. Poco a poco nuestro protagonista se verá acorralado entre tantas mentiras que dijo. ¿Podrá mantener en pié la farsa?
Como verá el lector, no es un protagonista fácil, tiene una personalidad muy marcada; por consiguiente es personaje muy bien armado, podría ser tranquilamente un ser de carne y hueso, alguien conocido y a la vez familiar.
La obra en sí no tiene un sentido moralista, sino más bien intenta que logremos entender a este ser humano decadente en su propio juego, esclavo del dinero y el azar; mostrándonos sus otros matices tales como su gran inteligencia y su voraz apetito lector, con lo cual pude conectar gratamente.
🌟La prosa de Alexander Baron puede ser una excelente opción para los admiradores de la pluma del gran Dostoyevski.
October 5, 2025
God, I loved this book! I’m a sucker for 1960’s London, especially the grotty, boarding house sort. Definitely one of my reading highlights of the year.
May 30, 2025
"We are carried to the grave on a stream of dead days and nights. We live them and forget them. Yet who knows on which dead day or night a terrible change can come into a life? "
And so starts The Lowlife, by Alexander Baron, first published in 1964. This edition will be released next month by Faber Editions with a new introduction by Iain Sinclair. Thank you to Net Galley and Faber for the ERC!
Harryboy Boas (love the name) is a gambling man. He lives in a boarding house in London's lower income neighborhood, and lives day to day by the seat of his pants. Gambling, whoring, and all manner of other lowlife activities have plagued him since the age of 14. But don't be deceived, Harryboy may not know where his next meal will come from, but he does have a charm to him that wins you over and insists that you root for the "bad guy" in this engaging novel. He also reads, and philosophizes, and has a heart of gold that only a few people get to see.
Things go very wrong for Harryboy when a new family, the Deaners, move into his building. Harryboy has a strong love-hate relationship with this new family. All he wants to do is be left alone to read his books during the day (don't we ALL wish for this?), and go out to bet on the dogs at the track at night. But Gregory, the Deaners 5 yr old boy, has other plans for Harry.
Harry soon finds himself enmeshed in the lives of this new family, the weak-kneed father, Vic - who cannot stand up to his overbearing, rageful and awful wife Evelyn. (Seriously, I wanted to harm this woman, she caused me lots of angst while reading this. She's really got some serious issues.) Evelyn, the wife I just mentioned, who definitely needs some Valium, and constantly complains about all the housework she does. She's also very racist. And lastly Gregory, who is a typical 5 yr old boy, who yes, can be annoying, but ultimately just wants to be loved and cared for like any child needs and deserves.
Our tale goes on with all manner of unexpected twists and turns and becomes a thoroughly enjoyable and lovable story about the unlikeliest of characters and how he comes to care for someone other than himself. Harryboy just has this likeability to him that I found appealing from the start. Maybe it was due to the opening paragraph, which I quoted above, but I was hooked within a few pages.
The writing was simple, but well done, and there were many little philosophical gems thrown in throughout the book, which is something that I always look for and appreciate. It's honestly something that always piques my interest. I want to know that there are other people out there that think the same things I do, even if they are fictional characters. It's reassuring and comforting.
I love finding treasures like this book. I will be thinking about Harryboy for a long time. He's won a solid place in my heart.
And so starts The Lowlife, by Alexander Baron, first published in 1964. This edition will be released next month by Faber Editions with a new introduction by Iain Sinclair. Thank you to Net Galley and Faber for the ERC!
Harryboy Boas (love the name) is a gambling man. He lives in a boarding house in London's lower income neighborhood, and lives day to day by the seat of his pants. Gambling, whoring, and all manner of other lowlife activities have plagued him since the age of 14. But don't be deceived, Harryboy may not know where his next meal will come from, but he does have a charm to him that wins you over and insists that you root for the "bad guy" in this engaging novel. He also reads, and philosophizes, and has a heart of gold that only a few people get to see.
Things go very wrong for Harryboy when a new family, the Deaners, move into his building. Harryboy has a strong love-hate relationship with this new family. All he wants to do is be left alone to read his books during the day (don't we ALL wish for this?), and go out to bet on the dogs at the track at night. But Gregory, the Deaners 5 yr old boy, has other plans for Harry.
Harry soon finds himself enmeshed in the lives of this new family, the weak-kneed father, Vic - who cannot stand up to his overbearing, rageful and awful wife Evelyn. (Seriously, I wanted to harm this woman, she caused me lots of angst while reading this. She's really got some serious issues.) Evelyn, the wife I just mentioned, who definitely needs some Valium, and constantly complains about all the housework she does. She's also very racist. And lastly Gregory, who is a typical 5 yr old boy, who yes, can be annoying, but ultimately just wants to be loved and cared for like any child needs and deserves.
Our tale goes on with all manner of unexpected twists and turns and becomes a thoroughly enjoyable and lovable story about the unlikeliest of characters and how he comes to care for someone other than himself. Harryboy just has this likeability to him that I found appealing from the start. Maybe it was due to the opening paragraph, which I quoted above, but I was hooked within a few pages.
The writing was simple, but well done, and there were many little philosophical gems thrown in throughout the book, which is something that I always look for and appreciate. It's honestly something that always piques my interest. I want to know that there are other people out there that think the same things I do, even if they are fictional characters. It's reassuring and comforting.
I love finding treasures like this book. I will be thinking about Harryboy for a long time. He's won a solid place in my heart.
April 24, 2019
Every now and then you finish a book and can’t wait to write a review to acclaim and recommend it, and to share with anyone else who has enjoyed it as much. Such is the case here.
Harryboy Boas tells his own story, that of a flawed character (‘lowlife scum’) by his own admission, and one that despite his inability to hold down a job or a relationship, and his habit of gambling any money he has away, earns the reader’s sympathy. His, is a memorable character of fiction: he has a trade, a Hoffman presser, rather than a gambling addiction, he is a student of its philosophy, and is at the dogs at Harringay, Clapton or Walthamstow most evenings. He has a bright and positive outlook on life, and a popularity earned by putting others before himself.
But, this is also a story of guilt, of Harry continually trying to find the path he continually veers off from. Boas, a Jewish East-ender, has one secret from his past that devastates him though. The timing of Baron’s writing is significant here, written just after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 when the true horror of the Holocaust dawned on the world.
Within Harry’s narrative there are several complex story lines, both humorous and tragic. It’s setting of a lodging house enables Baron to create a mix of characters very conveniently. It is a powerful evocation of a post-war London in a period of abrupt cultural change chiefly as a result of immigration.
Highly recommended.
Harryboy Boas tells his own story, that of a flawed character (‘lowlife scum’) by his own admission, and one that despite his inability to hold down a job or a relationship, and his habit of gambling any money he has away, earns the reader’s sympathy. His, is a memorable character of fiction: he has a trade, a Hoffman presser, rather than a gambling addiction, he is a student of its philosophy, and is at the dogs at Harringay, Clapton or Walthamstow most evenings. He has a bright and positive outlook on life, and a popularity earned by putting others before himself.
But, this is also a story of guilt, of Harry continually trying to find the path he continually veers off from. Boas, a Jewish East-ender, has one secret from his past that devastates him though. The timing of Baron’s writing is significant here, written just after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 when the true horror of the Holocaust dawned on the world.
Within Harry’s narrative there are several complex story lines, both humorous and tragic. It’s setting of a lodging house enables Baron to create a mix of characters very conveniently. It is a powerful evocation of a post-war London in a period of abrupt cultural change chiefly as a result of immigration.
Highly recommended.
April 24, 2017
Being generous with my stars and giving a full five for The Lowlife. Absolutely brilliant writing.
Harryboy Boas, a simple man who lives a day to day existence. Happy to read his life away and place bets at the dog races.
Until a new family moves into the shared house he lives in.......
Harryboy Boas, a simple man who lives a day to day existence. Happy to read his life away and place bets at the dog races.
Until a new family moves into the shared house he lives in.......
January 25, 2021
"...un dios que nadie atreve a desobedecer: el dinero"
Asi se asegura en la contraportada. Una frase no tan descabellada cuando todos podemos ver como hay tantas personas que encuentran un sentido, un propósito, una comunión a su alrededor; al igual que le aguardan flagelos, castigos y tiranías para quienes el azar cruce con los prácticantes más indeseados del credo.
Más allá del excelente trabajo que se hace retratando las miserias de los adictos al juego, lo considero una buena radiografía de hasta que punto la obsesión con el dinero puede arruinar cada día de nuestras vidas (y la de nuestros seres queridos, como daño colateral) sin importar en qué posición de la sociedad nos encontremos.
De lo mejor que hay en el catálogo de La bestia equilátera.
Asi se asegura en la contraportada. Una frase no tan descabellada cuando todos podemos ver como hay tantas personas que encuentran un sentido, un propósito, una comunión a su alrededor; al igual que le aguardan flagelos, castigos y tiranías para quienes el azar cruce con los prácticantes más indeseados del credo.
Más allá del excelente trabajo que se hace retratando las miserias de los adictos al juego, lo considero una buena radiografía de hasta que punto la obsesión con el dinero puede arruinar cada día de nuestras vidas (y la de nuestros seres queridos, como daño colateral) sin importar en qué posición de la sociedad nos encontremos.
De lo mejor que hay en el catálogo de La bestia equilátera.
August 2, 2012
I applaud Alexander Baron for having the ability to create such a devastatingly humorous book such as "The Lowlife". The sloth, hedonism, and frankness of the main character is not such a far cry from Lord Henry of "The Picture of Dorian Gray". I enjoyed this book for the simplicity of the plot and its characters. The children are children, the adults are adults. The characters are not unlike the ones many would find living on their block or, in my case, in their apartment building. In the middle of it is Harryboy, a middle-aged bachelor who loves gambling with money and, in a sense, with lives. "The Lowlife" will appeal to those who enjoy memoirs or autobiographical fiction that does more than tell a story, but tells an adventure. It is an easy read, and a good one as well.
December 7, 2018
Por favor no confundir con “El jugador” de Dostoievski.
Acá nos encontramos con un antihéroe, adicto apostador de canódromos.
El azar influye en la vida del protagonista, un judío inglés del Londres de la década del 60 y tiene su incidencia en quienes lo rodean, para bien o para mal.
Interesante lectura donde la caballerosidad inglesa se pasea en las situaciones menos previstas.
Acá nos encontramos con un antihéroe, adicto apostador de canódromos.
El azar influye en la vida del protagonista, un judío inglés del Londres de la década del 60 y tiene su incidencia en quienes lo rodean, para bien o para mal.
Interesante lectura donde la caballerosidad inglesa se pasea en las situaciones menos previstas.
October 18, 2025
Loved this. Listened to the audiobook narrated by Phil Davis and he’s brilliant. The book was recommended in the Backlisted podcast. It’s set in the sixties, following the main protagonist Harryboy Boas, a Jewish bachelor who spends his time mostly at the dog track gambling. Amongst other things it’s a beautiful portrait of the community life a boarding house in sixties Hackney/Dalston. I’m not going to lay out the story but the writing is absolutely fantastic. Some nice food references: he has a whisky and a sandwich at the track one night, and a neighbour cooks up some bananas and rum on another. And lovely period detail: I had to look up what a Hoffman Press was, and I enjoyed a reference to men going for a shave at the barber of a morning. And London detail too. I don’t know why this author isn’t better known he’s fantastic and I’ll be seeking out more.
Warning: typical racist and misogynist stuff seen in books of this time. I understand the author was himself involved in the antifascist movement and so likely more of a social commentary than his own opinions.
Warning: typical racist and misogynist stuff seen in books of this time. I understand the author was himself involved in the antifascist movement and so likely more of a social commentary than his own opinions.
September 7, 2025
A portrait of a post-war East End Jewish gambler who is haunted by the events of the holocaust. Explores the way children are used to project our hopes about the future and our guilt about the past.
3.5/5
3.5/5
January 30, 2016
Meu primeiro livro do Alexander Baron e sem dúvida que irei a fundo no autor. O livro é penetrante, original, divertido e incrivelmente bem escrito.
Recomendo.
Recomendo.
October 28, 2025
I sighed. 'I don't know where to start telling you,' I said. 'Look, I have a friend, he is a walking encyclopaedia about dogs. He can tell you the result of every race for the last five years. I heard him the other night at the track, for a half-dollar bet, name the sire and dam of every dog running that night-forty-eight dogs. That man is a gambler. And he is broke. Broke. What do you people think a track is? An orchard with money growing on the trees? My God, you think you're the only one. I see crowds of you pouring down the hill at Harringay, pushing past the turnstiles, all you silly greedy faces. Millions of you. You buy a newspaper and you think you know. For God's sake, a gambler spends his whole day studying form. All day he talks to other gamblers before he makes up his mind. He has been doing this for anything up to thirty years. He bets every way up you can imagine, forecasts, reverse forecasts, place bets, combin-ations, he uses one bet to guarantee him against another, he bets on the dogs and the horses, he bets doubles, trebles, accumulators, he can put on If Cash, Any to Come, Up and Down, Round the Clock, Rounders, Roundabouts, Round Robins, he can bet on owners, he can bet on trainers, he can bet on jockeys, he studies pedigree, he invents systems a professor wouldn't understand. And he still loses. For crying out loud, man, am I making you hear me? He still loses.' For a moment I lost my breath. 'So you, you greenhorn, you babe in arms, you poor innocent nit, you think you can just walk in and win?'
[180–1]
February 16, 2023
[Black Spring Press Group] (2021). SB. “Second revised edition” of the 1963 1/1. 257 Pages.
Contains a nice Introduction by Iain Sinclair. He visited the author, along with Chris Petit, during his twilight years.
Nods forward to Charles Bukowski and Jason Starr in style and subject matter.
Slightly tainted by the mutilating redaction, via asterisk substitution, of a few terms deemed offensive by the publisher. Utterly ridiculous given the narrative’s tenor.
Clearly articulates the desperate madness of pathological gambling.
“‘How did you lose it?’ ‘How did I lose it? I backed the wrong dogs. How do you think?’”
“Empty, the burden of possession lifted from me, I walked away.”
“A man’s luck has to change some time.”
“I walked home broke and as usual I had a feeling that denies any name but that of relief.”
“The gambler is the one who goes on with no peace, no release, till he has annihilated himself. I am a gambler.”
Contains a nice Introduction by Iain Sinclair. He visited the author, along with Chris Petit, during his twilight years.
Nods forward to Charles Bukowski and Jason Starr in style and subject matter.
Slightly tainted by the mutilating redaction, via asterisk substitution, of a few terms deemed offensive by the publisher. Utterly ridiculous given the narrative’s tenor.
Clearly articulates the desperate madness of pathological gambling.
“‘How did you lose it?’ ‘How did I lose it? I backed the wrong dogs. How do you think?’”
“Empty, the burden of possession lifted from me, I walked away.”
“A man’s luck has to change some time.”
“I walked home broke and as usual I had a feeling that denies any name but that of relief.”
“The gambler is the one who goes on with no peace, no release, till he has annihilated himself. I am a gambler.”
May 28, 2025
a lot more sentimental than I expected, baron really loved his seedy london boroughs and the people in them
October 29, 2025
it was alright. lukewarm. 3.5.
this kind of reminded me of diary of an oxygen thief if the main character felt a bit more guilty
this kind of reminded me of diary of an oxygen thief if the main character felt a bit more guilty
October 18, 2025
A fun, if rather workmanlike, novel on the betting dens of Hackney in the 60s. Reading Zola and gambling down the dog tracks never seemed so fulfilling as here. If only I could still buy a house for 200 quid...
Read
August 24, 2025I’ve had The Lowlife on the shelf unread for some time. A new edition from Faber, and discussion of the novel on a recent episode of Backlisted (having covered the book several years back), finally pushed me to crack open the cover.
Harryboy Boas (“Bo-as, two syllables, please”) is a gambler and a Jew living in a bedsit in London’s East End. He’s not so much a nebbish as a cross between a schvitzer and a schlepper—someone who puts on airs, pretending he’s “all that,” when in reality he’s a failure, unable to hold onto money for more than a minute before pissing it away at the track. His brother-in-law, a fast-talking schvitzer who can actually back his words with cash, tries to dig Harryboy out of the mess he’s in—but all to no good. When he’s not gambling away the few pounds he has, Harryboy is a literary soul, a lover of books who’s perfectly content to spend days in bed reading Zola.
The plot centres on the Deaner family who move into the apartment below Harry. There’s Vic, the book-keeping husband (more the typical nebbish), Evelyn, the cold hard-nosed wife who doesn’t like Harry one bit (even if she does use him to babysit her son when it suits), and five-year-old Gregory who has taken a liking to Harry. Things go downhill when Vic, taken in by Harry’s lies of being a wealthy gadabout, starts thinking he can be like Harry, that he too can make it big.
While I can’t speak to Baron’s depiction of Hackney of the late 50s and early 60s,* he absolutely nails the Jewish detail. It’s not just the Yiddish peppered through the text, it’s the joy of eating tzimmes, the constant need of his sister to find Harryboy a wife, and this extraordinary section where Harryboy reflects on the Holocaust (though he never uses the H word), particularly the children who were slaughtered—possibly his own child (he got a Jewish French girl pregnant just before the War, went back to England, and never heard from her again). It’s all the more poignant and moving because for Harryboy it’s recent history, the wounds are still fresh.
Then there’s the gambling. That also resonated, but for personal reasons I won’t go into here. Let’s just say Baron must have known his fair share of punters, because he nails the insidious nature of the addiction. The scene where Harryboy plays a game of craps to win a house is one of the most frank and accurate portrayals of gambling addiction I’ve read. What’s remarkable is how invested we become in Harry’s luck, but also how much we hope, like his sister, that he will walk away from the track, that he will find some measure of peace.
Hopefully the Faber reissue will see this truly great work get the attention it deserves.
*Iain Sinclair, in his introduction to the 2010 reissue, praises Baron’s rendering of Hackney—especially the transition from a working-class, all-white neighbourhood to one that embraces several nationalities, beginning with West Indian immigrants.
Harryboy Boas (“Bo-as, two syllables, please”) is a gambler and a Jew living in a bedsit in London’s East End. He’s not so much a nebbish as a cross between a schvitzer and a schlepper—someone who puts on airs, pretending he’s “all that,” when in reality he’s a failure, unable to hold onto money for more than a minute before pissing it away at the track. His brother-in-law, a fast-talking schvitzer who can actually back his words with cash, tries to dig Harryboy out of the mess he’s in—but all to no good. When he’s not gambling away the few pounds he has, Harryboy is a literary soul, a lover of books who’s perfectly content to spend days in bed reading Zola.
The plot centres on the Deaner family who move into the apartment below Harry. There’s Vic, the book-keeping husband (more the typical nebbish), Evelyn, the cold hard-nosed wife who doesn’t like Harry one bit (even if she does use him to babysit her son when it suits), and five-year-old Gregory who has taken a liking to Harry. Things go downhill when Vic, taken in by Harry’s lies of being a wealthy gadabout, starts thinking he can be like Harry, that he too can make it big.
While I can’t speak to Baron’s depiction of Hackney of the late 50s and early 60s,* he absolutely nails the Jewish detail. It’s not just the Yiddish peppered through the text, it’s the joy of eating tzimmes, the constant need of his sister to find Harryboy a wife, and this extraordinary section where Harryboy reflects on the Holocaust (though he never uses the H word), particularly the children who were slaughtered—possibly his own child (he got a Jewish French girl pregnant just before the War, went back to England, and never heard from her again). It’s all the more poignant and moving because for Harryboy it’s recent history, the wounds are still fresh.
Then there’s the gambling. That also resonated, but for personal reasons I won’t go into here. Let’s just say Baron must have known his fair share of punters, because he nails the insidious nature of the addiction. The scene where Harryboy plays a game of craps to win a house is one of the most frank and accurate portrayals of gambling addiction I’ve read. What’s remarkable is how invested we become in Harry’s luck, but also how much we hope, like his sister, that he will walk away from the track, that he will find some measure of peace.
Hopefully the Faber reissue will see this truly great work get the attention it deserves.
*Iain Sinclair, in his introduction to the 2010 reissue, praises Baron’s rendering of Hackney—especially the transition from a working-class, all-white neighbourhood to one that embraces several nationalities, beginning with West Indian immigrants.
November 7, 2025
The first I’ve read of Baron, I’ll definitely be reading some more.
December 25, 2025
Another fantastic addition to the Faber Editions series which continues to give and give.
This is a first person narrative by Harryboy Boas, whom the flyleaf describes as a “low life” gambler, but who I think is a little bit more sophisticated than that. He is, however, a true gambler, unable to resist just one more bet and unable to walk away from the track with enough money left to set him on a better course. His dream is to own a few houses, have a regular income from rents. He only needs a few hundred pounds to buy one and he often has that much in his hand, but always manages to lose it all.
Little things make the story stand out. Harryboy is Jewish, and brings the familial ties and even the cuisine into the narrative, but he is also a reader, and that is what sets him slightly apart from the classic gambler in my view. He is firmly rooted in the life and culture of London’s East End, the rough end of town and typically the place to which minorities and immigrants flock as a starting point. Deppe in the East End was where many of the Jewish immigrants settled and brought tailoring with them. Those who prospered moved up the hill to Golders Green, like Harryboy’s older sister.
The introduction is written by that other devotee of London’s East End, Iain Sinclair. If you check him out on Goodreads you will find he has written dozens of books about London, the East End, the myths, the rivers, and the reflective walking tours. Sinclair’s description of Harryboy is well worth quoting:
I found myself liking Harryboy, liking his good nature and kindness but also his bad habits. He was at his most alive when describing what it is like to be a gambler. You find yourself hoping that he will make enough to buy that first house and start to ‘go straight’, but then he gets himself into more and more debt and you know he will never reach that point of salvation. He even gives his money to help others, and puts his own life at risk to help the couple who live in the same shabby house where he rents a room. He takes Vic, from the flat downstairs, to the greyhound track to show him what goes on. But also to warn him against the beginners luck of a few easy wins. I love the narrative description of his way of life.
Vic has won a little then, bitten by the gambling bug, stolen money from his employer and lost it all. He can only turn to Harryboy for a solution, and Harryboy is going through a long, long streak of bad luck.
Harryboy is given to reflection, so we learn a little about his past, and a little about how he spends his day.
I love the way this big long paragraph starts and ends with the same fact – a long way around to telling you the same information. Soon after we get a glimpse into his day:
The novel has great pace, plenty of plot and wonderful characters. Love this novel and it will make me look out for the several other novels that Baron wrote from the 1940 through to the 1970s.
This is a first person narrative by Harryboy Boas, whom the flyleaf describes as a “low life” gambler, but who I think is a little bit more sophisticated than that. He is, however, a true gambler, unable to resist just one more bet and unable to walk away from the track with enough money left to set him on a better course. His dream is to own a few houses, have a regular income from rents. He only needs a few hundred pounds to buy one and he often has that much in his hand, but always manages to lose it all.
Little things make the story stand out. Harryboy is Jewish, and brings the familial ties and even the cuisine into the narrative, but he is also a reader, and that is what sets him slightly apart from the classic gambler in my view. He is firmly rooted in the life and culture of London’s East End, the rough end of town and typically the place to which minorities and immigrants flock as a starting point. Deppe in the East End was where many of the Jewish immigrants settled and brought tailoring with them. Those who prospered moved up the hill to Golders Green, like Harryboy’s older sister.
The introduction is written by that other devotee of London’s East End, Iain Sinclair. If you check him out on Goodreads you will find he has written dozens of books about London, the East End, the myths, the rivers, and the reflective walking tours. Sinclair’s description of Harryboy is well worth quoting:
Harry is detached, an observer. He’s damaged; compensating for events in his own past which have left him with a nagging sense of loss. He lives in an amnesias daze, a willed forgetting: existential burn-out in the shadow of the Holocaust. Nothing to be done and he’s doing it on a daily basis. He has his analgesic rituals; the heavy lunch, long afternoons reading and dozing on the bed, the prostitute, the good cigar. Gambling is risk, inevitable loss. Necessary punishment. It is his only connection to the life of the city, the mob. The rigorous scholarship with which Harryboy chases his fancies, three-legged dogs and hobbled nags, is religious. He is a righteous man studying the Torah of Tote. Temporary wealth, the wad that spoils the hang of a good suit, must be rapidly dispersed, recycled; converted into secondhand literature. Conspicuous charity, hits of sensual pleasure, return Harryboy to the Zen calm of having nothing, no possessions, no attachments, no unfulfilled ambitions.
I found myself liking Harryboy, liking his good nature and kindness but also his bad habits. He was at his most alive when describing what it is like to be a gambler. You find yourself hoping that he will make enough to buy that first house and start to ‘go straight’, but then he gets himself into more and more debt and you know he will never reach that point of salvation. He even gives his money to help others, and puts his own life at risk to help the couple who live in the same shabby house where he rents a room. He takes Vic, from the flat downstairs, to the greyhound track to show him what goes on. But also to warn him against the beginners luck of a few easy wins. I love the narrative description of his way of life.
I sighed. ‘I don’t know where to start telling you, I said. ‘Look, I have a friend, he is a walking encyclopaedia about dogs. He can tell you the result of every race for the last five years. I heard him the other night at the track, for a half-dollar bet, name the sire and dam of every dog running that night – forty-eight dogs. The man is a gambler. And he is broke. Broke. What do you people think a track is? An orchard with money growing on the trees? My God, you think you’re the only one. I see crowds of you pouring down the hill at Harringay, pushing past the turnstiles, all you silly greedy faces. Millions of you. You buy a newspaper and you think you know. For God’s sake, a gambler spends his whole day studying form. All day he talks to other gamblers before he makes up his mind. He has been doing this for anything up to thirty years. He bets every way up you can imagine, forecasts, reverse forecasts, place bets, combinations, he uses one bet to guarantee him against another, he bets on the dogs and the horses, he bets doubles, trebles, accumulators, he can put on If Cash, Any to Come, Up and Down, Round the Clock, Rounders, Roundabouts, Round Robins, he can bet on owners, he can bet on trainers, he can bet on jockeys, he studies pedigree, he invents systems a professor wouldn’t understand. And he still loses. For crying out loud, man, am I making you hear me? He still loses.’ For a moment I lost my breath. ‘So you, you greenhorn, you babe in arms, you poor innocent nit, you think you can just walk in and win?’
Vic has won a little then, bitten by the gambling bug, stolen money from his employer and lost it all. He can only turn to Harryboy for a solution, and Harryboy is going through a long, long streak of bad luck.
Harryboy is given to reflection, so we learn a little about his past, and a little about how he spends his day.
I went into tailoring when I was fifteen. My father, God rest his soul, was a cigarette-maker. He had a weak chest and he worked at home. He was at his table day and night. For what they paid him he had to work day and night. Coughing. Me he wanted to be a scholar. The Almighty only knows what dreams my father had for me. Only now when he is dead do I feel sorrow for the disappointment I must have caused him, which he never showed. Never did he have reproach for me. I won a scholarship when I was ten. I was a clever kid. A good Hebrew scholar, too. So I went to a high school. The family intellectual. They used to read my essays out to the other boys. Ten out of ten for composition. The kicks I got from putting words on paper! And books, 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 cards at fourteen, and going with my palls to shilling whores. Money I needed, for cigarettes and women and pride in my pocket. I left school when I was fifteen and got a job in the tailoring.
I love the way this big long paragraph starts and ends with the same fact – a long way around to telling you the same information. Soon after we get a glimpse into his day:
A gambler’s day goes pleasantly enough. He gets up late, and before he cleans his teeth – if he is as hygienic as all that – he reads the Greyhound Express. His first call is at the barber’s, where a long session is as much devoted to business – discussing the afternoon’s race-cards with the boys, telling them how he got on last night and hearing their stories – as to the pleasure of lying under hot towels. The rest of his day consists of a pleasant mooch from one listening post to another. These, the places where he can pick up information, include the restaurant or nosh bar where he has his lunch, and also a number of favourite street corners, billiard halls and betting shops along the three-and-a-half miles from Stamford Hill to Aldgate, where the fraternity of the doggies and ponies gather, the fellows who block the pavements in groups that cluster around open newspapers, fellows with close-shaved cheeks shining from the barber’s razors, spotless belted raincoats or glovetight black overcoats, good suits, bright ties, smart fresh shirt-collars and sporty trilbies that all look brand new. A good life, if you’re not one of the goomps who think there is some virtue in hard work.
The novel has great pace, plenty of plot and wonderful characters. Love this novel and it will make me look out for the several other novels that Baron wrote from the 1940 through to the 1970s.
November 29, 2025
I absolutely loved this. It's bleak, dark, Shakespeareanly tragic, full of life and dogged by foreboding.
August 2, 2025
I enjoyed the style found it funny in parts not sure I’d remember it a years time but an easy short read. That was deeper & more intelligent writing than I initially expected
May 21, 2012
Not at all what I expected. Probably would have enjoyed it even more if I hadn't broken it up by reading a chunk of Lincoln half way through it, but it still probably warrants five stars. I thought it would be a fairly standard East End wide-boy story, but the main character Harryboy Boas is thoughtful and guilt-ridden, and gambling is simply his vice. Actually, gambling is a device used to tell a story about families and relationships, and in particular the dynamics between Harryboy and his neighbours - a young family - that live together in a claustrophobic house in Hackney. I very much enjoyed Harryboy's perspective of the young boy, and how he dominates the house. As an adult, you fight for your right to control your environment, but with a strong willed youngster it is often a losing battle filled with despair. The book is thought-provoking; the characters are all finely drawn; the plot is entertaining - a times sad, often comic - that ends on a beautifully circular note.
July 29, 2025
‘Maybe it is something personal that eats me—Maybe everybody should feel guilty that we live in a time when millions of children have been done to death, and it is just my bad luck that because of an incident in my life, I cannot forget like others do. You can forget a million children. You cannot forget one child.
I made excuses for myself. I said I had only done small acts of wrong, the kind everybody does. But the smallest acts, even of thoughtlessness, lead to the greatest of evils. It is the old, universal human excuse, ‘I never meant any harm.’ Perhaps when the species is no more, all the armies of human souls will wail that one excuse in front of the throne of the Almighty, ‘We never meant any harm.’’
‘—you should never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finishing-line.’
rtc later maybe
February 13, 2019
I have just finished reading this book and I am breathless. Harry Boy Boas is not a Lowlife but a noble man. Similar to John Healy's The Grass Arena I found myself reading it because of a recommendation in one of Iain Sinclair's books. The last book that had me gripped in this fashion was John Buchan's 39 Steps and that was almost forty years ago. It is a book in which not that much happens but the dialogue would grace any stage play. You are forever in the moment with this novel. I'm glad that it is the first Alexander Baron I have read because I now wish to read the whole cannon. As conclusions or endings go, it certainly wasn't the one I was expecting but that is what makes it such an exceptional novel in that it ultimately inverts expectation.
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