I just finished reading Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City by Anna Quindlen. Actually, to be precise, rereading. I know I read this four or five years ago but for the life of me I could not remember anything about it aside from a vague sense of disappointment. Now that I’ve reread it, I wonder how there could have been any vagueness about my reaction.
In theory, this is just the kind of book I should adore. Quindlen, an American author, has loved London since childhood but never visited until in her forties. But even before she visited there in person, she had been there many times in the pages of her favourite books:
I have been to London too many times to count in the pages of books, to Dickensian London rich with narrow alleyways and jocular street scoundrels, to the London of Conan Doyle and Margery Allingham with its salt-of-the-Earth police officers, troubled aristocrats, and crowded train stations. Hyde Park, Green Park, Soho, and Kensington: I had been to them all in my imagination before I ever set foot in England. So that by the time I actually visited London in 1995 for the first time, it felt less like an introduction and more like a homecoming.
It is certainly a sentiment I can agree with and yet there is something about Quindlen that rubs me the wrong way. Rather than being able to nod along with the book, I found myself fixating on minor errors. Nigel Nicolson was not Virginia Woolf’s nephew (as asserted on page 33) and Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga is not set 150 years ago (p. 39). How could I truly accept Quindlen’s credentials as a devotee of fictional London after that? I read through to the end but I no longer trusted Quindlen’s facts and being suspicious of an author does not make for a particularly pleasant reading experience, however brief (the book is very short). Her delight in Dickens only served to further distance me from her.
I agreed with many of Quindlen’s statements but agreement does not necessary equal an enjoyable reading experience. I do not think she and I are kindred spirits, certainly not based on the strength of this book, and, frankly, I found her rather obnoxious and smug as she bragged about her (frankly questionable) cultural knowledge. It may be an interesting book if you like Quindlen but it is relatively useless if you’re interested in hearing about London, literary or otherwise, because of all the personal tangents she goes off on. This is a tale of Quindlen’s personal relationship to her reading and to the city of London that she knows through her reading, but her London is not a city I recognized either through my own reading or my visits nor is it one I’m particularly eager to visit.
The Captive Reader 
I felt the same disappointment! It was just too shallow. I felt much more of a connection reading Helene Hanff’s The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, even though it was published in 1973 and I haven’t read many of the books she talks about.
I am so looking forward to reading The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Hanff is so engaging and entertaining that I know I’ll love it, even if I’m not familiar with the books mentioned. After all, I was familiar with the books Quindlen references and that didn’t make the reading experience any more enjoyable!
Oh no! I might not read this one then. I do loathe Dickens, and I hate it when authors get their facts wrong. I really didn’t connect w the other Quindlen I read (about loving books), so this was going to by my second try with her.
I think you can safely skip this one! I have to admit that, as irritated as I am with Quindlen for her errors, I’m also a bit ticked off that her publisher didn’t catch them.
I tried reading this book last year and I could not get through it. I found it really boring.
I certainly can understand why you abandoned it!
I read a book of Anna Quindlan’s essays (Thinking Out Loud) years ago and liked it fine for what it was (musings on current events), but I never would have expected her to be the right person to write a book like this. I’d expect a book like this from someone who exudes Anglophilia; Quinlan exudes contemporary America, which is not a bad thing but probably not right for this kind of book (at least not if I’m likely to enjoy it).
I’ve never read anything else by Quindlen (and am frankly unlikely to do so now) but she does begin by presenting herself here as an Anglophile, something she never quite lives up to.
I agree with you on this. I read it a few years ago, really expected to like it, but it was only mildly interesting in spots, and unmemorable. Not a keeper.
This seems to have been a popular reaction!
I see I’m not the only one who disliked it, I tried it a few years ago and as everyone else is saying, found it boring and unbelievably smug. It didn’t capture the joy I found being in London at all, as mentioned above, Helene Hanff’s ‘England of English literature’ does that.
What a consistent reaction we bloggers had to this! I really am going to have to borrow the Hanff soon.
DAMN it. I even went and got my little notebook out of my purse to write down the title of this so I could get it at the library. And then I came back and read the whole post and I discover that the book will not fill me with joy after all because it is untrustworthy. Sigh.
Sorry to get your hopes up Jenny!
Not up to expectations, but perhaps they were too high, since a lot of reading and a short trip don’t seem to have given depth to this book. Plus, Nigel Nicolson is NOT Virginia Woolf’s nephew! Whew!