A ROOM IN CHELSEA SQUARE

by Anonymous ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A stinging portrait of a small group of deviates in London makes satiric, but not necessarily amusing, use of its material, always a questionable target. ""Quean"" bee is Patrick, fantastically wealthy but aware that he is aging (although he still felt ""the very same boy who had come down from Oxford"") and he is instrumental in bringing a young protege to London-Nicholas Milestone. Nicholas never reaches his room in Chelsea Square but is taken to Patrick's luxurious flat; his career is also in abeyance- and he realizes that Patrick, a commanding, cajoling, conniving despot, will give him everything, permit him nothing. A number of other equally odious if less opulent figures move in and out of Patrick's orbit:-a dress designer who thinks of starting a fashion magazine; a portraitist; a young, former R.A.F. pilot- much in demand, before the close in which Nicholas, chary of really giving for what he is getting, is abandoned by Patrick who leaves the country with a more compliant replacement..... If these characters, with all their pet and pettish affections, are ticked off with a presumable accuracy and even greater malice, there is no reason to believe that their inversion will have any wider interest than the word itself suggests.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: FICTION