Family Curse

by John Hampson

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1936

About the author

John Hampson Simpson was born in Birmingham in 1901, the fifth of eight children. Hampson’s childhood was a difficult one: the collapse of his father’s business reduced the family to near poverty, and his own weak health prevented him from attending school and receiving a formal education. After the First World War, young Hampson worked at a variety of jobs, including as a waiter at a London hotel and assisting at his sister’s pub, both of which experiences he draws on in Saturday Night at the Greyhound.

In 1925, Hampson obtained a post as tutor to a mentally disabled boy, and the relative stability of the job allowed him to take up writing in his free time. Virginia Woolf believed Hampson’s first novel, Go Seek a Stranger, to be his best, but it was rejected for publication because of its frank homosexual content and remains unpublished. Instead, in February 1931, Woolf and her husband Leonard’s Hogarth Press issued Saturday Night at the Greyhound, which was a surprise hit, being declared a bestseller by The Observer two days after publication and running into three printings in eight days. It was quickly translated into French and in 1937 became one of the first successful Penguin paperbacks.

Hampson’s later novels, though respectfully reviewed, were less successful commercially. These included O Providence (1932), another Hogarth release, and a trio of novels published by Heinemann, of which Strip Jack Naked (1934) is perhaps the best known. In the 1930s, Hampson was a leading figure in the “Birmingham Group”, which also included Walter Allen and Leslie Halward, and he counted Forrest Reid, Graham Greene, and W. H. Auden among his literary friends. Hampson’s final novel A Bag of Stones (1952), a psychological study of how a boy’s horrific childhood leads to the murder of his father, was well reviewed and was championed by the influential publisher John Lehmann. Hampson died in 1955.

Reviews

[JRennet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book at a flea market and bought it without knowing anything about it.
It narrates 1-day in a family of enriched people, when the matriarch is dying and every child (and spouse) is called to witness the moment. You get to know what happens in the morning and in the afternoon from the point of view of every character.
I really enjoyed the book: the narrative and the structure are really captivating. The characters are well build, realistic and mostly dislikable. Some are quite modern, about raising child, or society, and furs and animal rights. It is a book of 1936 and those characters would fit in our times(with the positive addition of not being called abnormal because of being gay, hopefully). Those are the positive ones that are in an eternal fight with the conservative, homophobic, capitalist ones ( in the book, I am not reading more than what it is said).
While I was reading it I thought a bit about Virginia Woolf, and later learnt that she first published this author. I can see why.

A Great, unexpected book!

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1936.
13 different point of views about the happenings of a long day in a middle class birmingham family house.
The matriarch is dying and all siblings arrive to the family house to witness the passing.
Only two characters seem to have avoided the family curse of greed and immorality: the housekeeper
and the youngest gay son.