Another Man in the Street

September 16, 2024
A West Indian immigrant tries to make a name for himself as a London journalist in this flat offering from Phillips (The Lost Child). Victor, the son of a St. Kitts cane cutter, leaves his native Caribbean island in the 1960s for England, where “young girls seemed brassier, and their hemlines were going up.” Attempting to establish himself before bringing over his wife, Lorna, and their young child from St. Kitts, Victor finds employment first in a shoddy Notting Hill pub, then as a rent collector for Peter, a prosperous Jewish immigrant whose girlfriend, Ruth, he steals. He eventually starts writing for a broadsheet called the West Indian News, and after race riots shake England in the early 1980s, Victor seeks to capture what life is like for immigrants of color under the reign of Margaret Thatcher. The narrative alternates between Victor’s early years and late-career disappointments and also follows the fortunes of Lorna, Peter, and Ruth. Unfortunately, none of the characters are magnetic or fully drawn enough to hold the reader’s attention. This doesn’t reach the heights of this Phillips’s best work. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co.

December 15, 2024
A novel about the immigrant experience from an author known for his interrogations of colonialism. Novelist, playwright, and essayist Phillips was born on St. Kitts, but he grew up in a predominantly white community in the United Kingdom. In his work, he explores the impact of British imperialism and the lives of Black people trying to find their way in a society that sees them as "other." Here, Phillips presents Victor Johnson--the son of a sugar cane farmer--who emigrates from the Caribbean to England in the 1960s with the hope of becoming a journalist. To put this another way, Victor is a Black man trying to escape the limitations of colonialism by emigrating to the country that, through its imperial interventions, made his home a place he feels the need to escape. The narrative begins with Victor narrating his journey on a ship bound for England. When he reappears, he's a handyman called Lucky in a shabby Notting Hill pub, and we see him through the eyes of another character--a white character. This shift in point of view is powerful in that it gives readers a sense of the context in which Victor is trying to remake himself. At the same time, a narrative that was already slow grinds to a near halt as Phillips describes the social universe of this pub in a way that does not serve the story. This is early on, and it sets the pace for the rest of the novel. Victor will eventually become a journalist. He will do his best to document the Thatcher years as a Black immigrant. But getting from the 1960s to the '80s includes a lot of digressions into other character's lives, and none of these characters emerges as terribly compelling--including Victor. No book this short should feel so slow.

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Starred review from December 1, 2024
Victor, "the strange boy who read books," leaves St. Kitts with dreams of becoming a newspaperman in 1960s London. Lucky is a West Indian working in a shabby London pub. The white barman, who fled Liverpool and his cruel, alcoholic father, tries to befriend Lucky, but offends him instead. Lucky goes to work for landlord Peter, a Holocaust survivor. Both men are enamored with office manager Ruth, whose backstory is one of pain and loss following a teen pregnancy. Lucky, revealed to be Victor, pursues his journalistic ambitions, but true success eludes him. A writer sharply attuned to the nexus of psychological torments and social maladies, especially the vicissitudes of immigration and racism, Phillips (A View of the Empire at Sunset, 2018) lays bare his characters' deeply troubled psyches as they struggle with stymied relationships and betrayals, each unable to express their feelings and needs, each traumatized by hate and violence, each helplessly concealing crucial aspects of their lives as love withers. Contrasting the long shadows of colonialism and WWII with the shininess of the mod era, Phillips demonstrates profound depths of imagination and empathy in this astute, bleak, and heartbreakingly exquisite tale.

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