Anticipating Colin MacInnes but with the word count of Dickens, London Belongs To Me is a sort of wartime soap opera about the lives of the landlady and five tenants of a South London house. There's a murder in the early chapters and the Blitz at the end - or what should be the end - but the characters are the real focus of the story. Collins writes about people in a timeless yet slightly comic style which means that they are both ordinary and larger than life. I didn't really get a sense of the pre/early war era in which the book is set, either, but enjoyed much of my stay at Dulcimer Street - a better editor, to crop around two hundred pages and pick up on characters with multiple names, would have made this a five star book for me. And on a side note, I haven't loathed a character like Percy Boon since having to endure Pinkie in Brighton Rock! ( )

Heavily Dickens-influenced slab of London life covering the inhabitants of a Kennington rooming-house from Christmas 1938 to Christmas 1940. There are some funny scenes, especially involving the novel's best character, the spiritualist and con-man Mr Squales, who unwittingly possesses real psychic powers (which I thought ought to have featured more than just twice). However, most of the humour is very much of the "gentle" variety, as Collins affectionately steers characters like the bumbling, congestive Mr Puddy and the impoverished but optimistic Connie through a series of minor misadventures. The scenes from the blitz, which only get going in the last 1/4 of the novel, are very well done. The trials of Connie and Percy are also standout set-pieces.

The two downsides for me were the Dickensian nomenclature (Josser, Puddy, Squales, a barrister by the name of Veesey Blaise) and Collin's constant narration from within his characters' heads which, given they speak in rather similar voices, gives the prose a saminess that grates over 700+ pages. But that's the kind of book this is.

There's no grand scheme to this novel; it's just a well-drawn soap focusing on ordinary Londoners. I can absolutely see why it was a popular smash on publication. ( )

London Belongs to Me had everything I look for in a book: well-drawn characters, a vivid setting, and interesting storylines. Throw in some history and I’m pretty well set. The novel opens on Christmas Eve, 1938, as Fred Josser is retiring from his long career as a bookkeeper. His entire adult life has been shaped by daily routine, and one can imagine he will have difficulty coping with retirement. Mr Josser returns home to celebrate Christmas with his family, introducing the reader to the other tenants of 10 Dulcimer Street. Besides Mr & Mrs Josser and their adult children Ted and Doris, there’s Mr Puddy, Mrs Boon and her son Percy, Connie the aging former actress turned hatcheck girl, spiritual medium Mr Squales, and landlady Mrs Vizzard. Each has a story that will play out gradually over two years and more than 700 pages.

The Jossers are very much at the center of this novel. They look out for their neighbors and seem to be involved to some degree in most anything that happens. This is not always by choice -- Connie has a way of putting her nose into everyone’s business, to amusing effect. But when Mrs Boon and Percy fall on hard times, the Jossers work tirelessly on their behalf, setting their own dreams aside. When Mrs Vizzard suffers a betrayal, Mrs Josser overcomes her natural reserve to provide comfort. And then there’s the war and its far-reaching impact on everyone’s lives.

This book makes for easy, relaxing reading, thanks to a pleasing rotation of chapters focused on the many characters, and ending with mini-cliffhangers that made me eager to keep reading to learn what would happen next. ( )

It's a pity this book is so little known. A wonderful evocation of life in London at the beginning of WWII, seen through the eyes of ordinary Londoners living in a boarding house - a common occurrence at that time, very few people owned their own home, so it's interesting to see the Jossers planning for their little house in the sticks. ( )

I've been telling anyone who will listen about this book. It is an incredible piece of literature - full of life, humour, pathos. It reads like a classic Ealing Film and it made me warm to London in a way I haven't before. All of the characters are beautifully real, from the landlady of the house that acts as the focus of the novel, to her crazy fiancé who pretends to be a medium without realising he really is a medium, and the perpetually resting actress who likes to be in the thick of everyone's business. The best characters, though, are the Josser family. They are every working class family from that era - resolute, principled, kind but not showy. I was sad when I had to close the book on them. I love it when characters become important to me like that. ( )