Tag: Gay writers

Earth- John Boyne (Doubleday 2024)

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This is the second part of Irish author John Boyne’s “The Elements” Quartet.  The first part “Water” made it into my Top 10 Books of 2023 and had me tearing up the rule book as it certainly shifted my feelings about short novels/novellas as it was a near-perfect example of the form, contained very nicely within its 176 pages.  It’s done well commercially for the author in hardback which is a testament to his commercial power as faced with a table of new hardback books in a shop I’d be tempted to go with something thicker to get more for my money, but wherever I see it displayed it shines out at me and is obviously being chosen by many readers.

But could he do it again?  There’s a bit of a niggling inside me to consider it a 5* book before even starting it as I’ve awarded this author the top rating 6 times from the 9 books of his I’ve read.  He’s already at the top of my 5* rating league but even as I’m writing this I’m not 100% positive of which way I’m going to go.

We’ve met main character Evan Keogh before.  In “Water” he is the teenage boy on the unspecified island off the West Coast of Ireland who is very talented at football but would prefer to be an artist.  Here we find him in London, a Champions League footballer embroiled in a scandal and facing criminal proceedings.  His entry into professional football is unusual and he doesn’t fit into that world.  We switch, in this first-person narrative, between his present and past.  A major theme of the novel is consent, a topic which has already seen me giving 5* to Ela Lee’s “Jaded” (2024) this year and a book I can never get out of my mind is Kia Abdullah’s legal thriller “Truth Be Told” (2020) yet here John Boyne certainly offers fresh perspectives.

I couldn’t put this down, which you might think is not saying a great deal as it is only 176 pages (the same length as “Water”) but, on reflection, I don’t think it is as perfectly formed as its predecessor, which felt so complete.  Here, I found myself yearning for another 200 or so pages so that scenes which felt a little skimmed over could really breathe and that would have made this something really extraordinary.  I have to balance that feeling with the fact that the author has certainly left me wanting more- which shifts him back up into my five star criteria.

My only niggle concerns something I mentioned in my review of “Water” where I felt that the crafting of it “belies one of my issues with novellas in that despite their brevity they can feel drawn out”.  Here, there’s a character who comes back into Evan’s life in a scene which didn’t blend in so well and felt like a hint of padding within its limited pages.  Maybe this character had a significance I didn’t pick up on or may reappear in one of the later works.

And what of the element itself?  Earth is perhaps harder to pin down than water which was everywhere in the island setting of its novel but here it is used very well as the pull of Ireland, the home soil, its physical presence on the football pitch, the smothering sensation Evan experiences at times, as in being buried alive and in its grubbiness which dominates the whole piece, as it is a slightly queasy read throughout.

It may not be as well crafted as “Water” but, boy, is it compelling and offers a high-quality reading experience.  Is it up there with the very best of John Boyne’s five star works?  No, but “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” is one of my favourite novels ever so it’s probably not going to be, but it does compare with the other novels I’ve awarded 5* to this year and the answer become suddenly clear to me.

Half-way through The Elements Quartet and I don’t know whether the intention is to publish the four in one volume at some point.  If it is, what a work this would potentially be! But, however mouth- watering a prospect this would be I wouldn’t suggest holding out.  If I was John Boyne I’d be tempted to write a really long last instalment to stop that happening!  You do need to read these now.  The third volume “Fire” will be out towards the end of the year.

Earth is published by Doubleday on 18th April.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The House Of Hidden Meanings – Rupaul (2024)

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I read Rupaul’s first memoir “Lettin’ It All Hang Out” back in 1995 when it was first published and enjoyed it so much I read it a couple of times.  Thinking about that book whilst reading this (I no longer own a copy) I’m not sure how much Rupaul the person was present, it was very much Rupaul the brand, full of life tips, things he loved, alongside snippets from his past.

But what a brand Rupaul is and it’s one that has exploded since that publication.  At that time he already felt a trailblazer for reaching unprecedented levels of fame for a tall, black, American drag queen with a music and movie career but from 2009 he began “Rupaul’s Drag Race” and few would have imagined that this would bring him huge success, a worldwide franchise, umpteen awards and “Mama Ru” is no longer just a trailblazer but at the centre of something that has transformed society on a global scale.

But this is all for the future as “House Of Hidden Meanings” doesn’t take us that far.  If the last book of his I read was Rupaul the brand this is very much Rupaul the person.

Born in 1960 in San Diego this is the tale of a boy whose childhood was marked by a mother unable to cope with the breakdown of her marriage and a father who would not turn up for his son when Rupaul was sat on the front steps waiting for him.  His mother always believed her child would become famous and he knew he was different.  From his time in therapy Rupaul describes this as terminal uniqueness – “this sense of being so different from everyone that it felt like a death sentence.” The world had to catch up to allow this boy to find fame by being different and using that difference to make his mark upon the world.

It could have gone so wrong.  There’s a lot of substance abuse in this book and precarious situations which could have easily turned and when fame comes most of these issues do not go away.

I read this quickly in a couple of days.  I think when I heard Rupaul was writing this I was expecting a fuller story.  He really could have come up with a work as thick as the recent Streisand tome and it would still not be all told.  He can be sketchy on dates and the fame when it comes feels a little glossed over, he seems to rapidly go from club turns to hosting the Brits with Elton John and perhaps that is what it felt like at the time or perhaps he’s allowing some overlap to be picked up again in a later volume.

You can hear the voice of Rupaul throughout, his affirmations, his ability to analyse and crystallise situations, his self-help nuggets and the metaphors which don’t always hit home.  I’m still a little vague around the title but this is one of the real strengths of this work as you get the sense of the real Rupaul Charles shining through though I think I would have liked just a little more to have made this into the important biography I was hoping it was going to be.

The House Of Hidden Meanings was published in hardback by 4th Estate in the UK in 2024.

Too Much – Tom Allen (2022)

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I read Tom Allen’s first memoir “No Shame” in 2021, a work that had at its themes shame linked to acceptance of his sexuality and a deep fear of standing out. I described it as “ a well-written, funny, significant text.”

This follow-up I listed as one of my 2022 Should Have Reads and treating myself to a copy this Christmas have now got round to it.  (I still have only read two from this list..)

This is a lower-key affair compared to the debut with the central linking theme being grief as Tom lost his Dad in 2021 with a sudden fatal heart attack on a train being the cause.  Tom, at one point, describes this work as a series of essays and they explore their relationship, his dealing with loss and moments from the comedian’s life when he either followed or deviated from his fathers’ advice.  This approach does remove the need for a tight structure and chronologically and thematically it is a little over the place, but that doesn’t matter and it does mean the reader can dip in and out as each section works as a stand-alone piece.

I find Tom Allen very funny.  Having said that I didn’t find this book, unlike the last one, laugh-out-loud funny.  There’s a humorous poignancy which runs throughout and I did smile many times.  Sometimes there’s a tendency for performers who turn to writing to go through their act and I didn’t feel this at all, we see a softer side away from his on-stage brashness, which actually makes him one of the very best at dealing with audiences.  This desire to give us something slightly aside from the public persona bodes well for him as a writer.  I feel that this structure works effectively and there’s potential for him to be a kind of British David Sedaris.  Another likeable strong work and a moving and life-affirming tribute to his Dad.

Too Much was published by Hodder and Studio in 2022.

The Gallopers- Jon Ransom (Muswell Press 2024)

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The first of the books I had highlighted as a must-read for 2024 was very nearly my first five star rating of the year.  Jon Ransom won the Polari First Novel Prize for his debut “The Whale Tattoo” (2022) which I really enjoyed giving it four stars and describing it as “dark, raw and relentlessly gritty.” This offers more of the same and I think I liked it even more.

Eli is a young man living with his aunt in Norfolk in 1952.  His mother disappeared following a flood in the area, which did not spread to the land Eli’s family live on.  Because of this, local residents think the fields are cursed and respond by acts of hooliganism towards the property.  Eli’s aunt allows Jimmy, whose family work the merry-go-round at fairs (the gallopers) to stay in their barn and Eli finds himself becoming obsessed.

There’s real intensity here- the first half of the novel takes place during a heatwave and as emotions simmer it reminded me of the Southern American work of authors such as William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams and I found myself having to remind myself that this was early 1950s Britain.  There is a sense of detachment from the characters which does feel very English, however, and which steers clear of the melodrama we might associate with the American authors.  It moves well, I read it quickly and it exerts an enigmatic power which I enjoyed. What had really appealed to me when I first heard about the book was that it was offering a spread in time and would move forward thirty years to London at the time of AIDS.  In the end this was the element of the novel which stopped me from reaching for my five stars.

This change of time setting is reflected by the beginning of the script of a play written by the main character which retreads some of the events from a more modern perspective.  It isn’t a very long section but it does not work as far as I am concerned and I couldn’t see its relevance.  It seems an odd stylistic choice and now I’m very aware that Paul Murray’s “The Bee Sting” also saw the author making odd choices and that ended up as my current Book Of The Year but here I’m just puzzled.  It breaks the flow of an involving plot and the book is not long enough to require a break from the main narrative thread and it seems to have been done for reasons I can’t fathom. 

Putting that aside there’s much to impress here, more disappearances, hypocrisy, lives lived by rules and a self-loathing lead character offended by his “sissy-sounding voice” who puts his family’s problems down to his inability to fit into the working-class male environment of 1950s Norfolk.  This made for a gutsy and at times grubby read as well as exerting an almost elemental power especially with Eli’s relationships with the female characters. I would be interested in other perspectives from readers concerning the more modern section.

The Gallopers is published on 25th January 2024 by Muswell Press. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

To The Dogs – Louise Welsh (Canongate 2024)

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I haven’t read Louise Welsh before.  Her 2002 debut “The Cutting Room” made a big impact and won several awards and led to a sequel 20 years later.  In between there has been a trilogy (Plague Times 2014-17), story collections, a non-fiction work on Glasgow and stand-alone novels of which this is her fifth.

Main character Jim Brennan is a criminologist, and Vice Chancellor at the University where he is a professor.   We first meet him in 2017 jet-lagged from a flight after a visit to the sister university in Beijing in the waiting room of a Scottish police station where his son has been arrested on drug charges.  How much parents are prepared to do for their offspring is a central theme here and Jim finds himself getting deeper into difficult situations as he tries to protect his son.

Brennan is a man who needed to escape his past, academia has saved him from the violent law-breaking of his own father, now dead, but the past has a habit of creeping back and bringing a whole new set of challenges for the ambitious professor. 

Plot-wise it is involving enough but I think where it didn’t quite shine for me was because I couldn’t care for any of the characters, in fact, I almost got a sense of guilty pleasure when bad things happened, and that was right from the start.  I’m not convinced that was the author’s intention and it seems a bit of a risky strategy.  Nobody also had that obvious streak of villainy which can also appeal.  I think there’s potentially a point where readers might feel they don’t want to continue reading about these lives until the past and present slot more in synch and we get a more immediately involving situation as the dubious politics of institutions and global influences on cash-strapped educational establishments brings a whole new perspective.  This was a solid thriller which certainly has interested me in Louise Welsh’s backlist.

To The Dogs is published in the UK by Canongate on 18th January 2024.  Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Story Of The Night- Colm Toibin (1996)

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This is my introduction to Irish writer Colm Toibin.  It was his third novel (he has now written another 7 plus a couple of short fiction works). Main character and narrator Richard Garay is navigating life in 1980s Argentina.  At the start of the novel he is living with his English mother, there are rumours of people disappearing and he’s looking for something outside of teaching English.  He meets an American couple who see him as useful in supporting the oil industry and in helping overseas investors understand the complexities of South American politics.  Richard is gay and he lives a guarded life looking for the right person to commit to.

This is a quiet novel, there’s an economy in the writing.  It reminds me slightly of early Alan Hollinghurst.  The author weaves a captivating world, where, although it took me quite a while to respond to the distance emanating from the characters I became completely sucked into the world they inhabited. Moving through the 1980s we know that war over the Falklands/Malvinas will have some bearing and that it is inevitable that the shadow of AIDS will cast over the proceedings in some way.

I was always fascinated even by the political wheeling and dealing which Richard observes but the last third which focuses more on relationships I thought was terrific.  Because of the reserve which had run through the novel to this point when things got emotional it all seemed more powerful.  I was left with the feeling that this book had managed to work itself into my very soul and I would continue to be haunted by it for some time.  I’m really pleased about this because I have another couple of unread Toibins on my shelves and I sense that this author is a significant discovery for me.

The Story Of The Night was first published in 1996 by Picador.

Water- John Boyne (Doubleday 2023)

On By philshanklinIn New Books, Uncategorized6 Comments

I am aware that I have grumbled a few times on this site about short novels or novellas.  This year I’ve read short work by Philippe Besson, Claire Keegan and Mike McCormack and I’ve felt the need each time to mention my ambivalent feelings towards this form.  In my review of Claire Keegan’s much celebrated “Small Things Like These” (2021) I said “faced with a couple of tempting novels, one short, one longer I’d generally pick the longer.” Trust John Boyne to challenge my prejudices.

It’s no real surprise that this is one of the few under 200 pages (176 in the hardback edition) that I’m giving my top rating to.  Irish writer John Boyne is the author I’ve given the most five stars to ever (this will be the 6th out of the 9 books of his I’ve read).

The author is getting all elemental on us with this the first in a projected quartet which will also feature Fire, Earth & Air, producing a literary sequence which is reminiscent of the seasonal quartet which did so well for Ali Smith (note to self- must get round to the other three of these).

“Water” is the tale of a woman in her early fifties who arrives on a sparsely populated Irish island to escape her past.  The first things she does is change her name and shave her head so we know the past is obviously a problem.  Slowly, we get to know why she is there and what she is hiding from.  What John Boyne does so well is to hide the horrors amongst domestic detail – there’s a point where the situation is grim for main character Willow/Vanessa related through her first-person narrative but she becomes preoccupied with the arrival of her new credit card.  Although she has chosen a solitary life there’s some great interactions especially with neighbour and busybody Mrs Duggan.  The author knows exactly when to release information to us (generally just slightly before you think it’s coming, which keeps the reader on their toes).  It is superbly crafted.  This belies one of my issues with novellas in that despite their brevity they can feel drawn out.  Here, it feels packed with character development, plot twists and a delight in story-telling.  Water is everywhere, unsurprisingly as the main character has relocated onto a smaller island than where she previously lived but it is the danger and unpredictability of it which influences this work most.

I really did not want it to end but it feels as if it does so at an appropriate time which challenged another of my short-fiction notions.  I’ve read two sub-200 pages books by celebrated authors back to back.  In my opinion John Boyne gets the form exactly right and really drew me in whereas Mike McCormack, which also dealt with serious issues, distanced me somewhat and left me unsatisfied.  I can’t wait to read the other three works in this quartet- whether they are going to be short or long.

Water is published in the UK by Doubleday on 2nd November 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Family Meal – Bryan Washington (Atlantic 2023)

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I’ve read quite a lot of historical fiction recently so it felt refreshing to be plunged into Bryan Washington’s contemporary Texas.  This is the third work of his I’ve read (one of the few authors I’m up to date with).  His collection of short stories “Lot” (2019) I found powerful and brutal and I rated his first novel “Memorial” (2021) five stars finding it less spiky which provoked a real emotional response from me.  This second novel feels closer to the stories in “Lot”.

Bryan Washington likes to explore family dynamics in the modern world; that’s both biological and the people you’d choose to be family, those that stick by and support.  As a gay black man who has his 30th birthday this month his characters are unsurprisingly diverse in terms of race, culture and sexual identity.  There are three main characters here who each provide first-person narratives.  Cam is a mess, he’s returned back to the Houston area following the death of his partner and is getting by through casual pick-ups and an eating disorder.  As a teenager Cam stayed with his friend TJ’s parents and TJ gets back in touch and is the second narrator.  The third is Kai, the dead boyfriend whose ghost Cam sees.  Cam attempts to get his life together as TJ begins to question his and despite the prickliness of their relationship they do what they can to support each other.

We begin with Cam which feels a little brave as he is so closed off to the world that his narrative is difficult to relate to but this pays off when TJ takes over as we gain a real understanding of what Cam has gone through and the strength of the bonds between these two as they work in TJ’s family’s bakers.  There’s a lot of talk which means progress through this book is quite quick. 

After three works set in the same location there are echoes of a modern take on Armistead Maupin’s “Tales Of The City” but here with a strong urban Black American feel and with Houston and its residents taking the place of San Francisco.  What the two authors have in common is real heart which means here throughout the questionable behaviours, the characters’ indifference to all the gay sex they seek out, the complexities of their past and present and the difficulty of negotiating the modern world there’s a surprising positivity which remains with the reader.  I did find this more in “Memorial” but it is certainly also here in a novel which will continue to enhance this author’s reputation.

Family Meal is published by Atlantic Books on 12th October 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Velvet Mafia- Darryl W Bullock (2021)

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British author Darryl W Bullock impressed with his irresistibly titled “David Bowie Made Me Gay” (2017), an overview of LGBT+ music which was a work of admirable scope and highlighted both the major and minor artists who worked towards changes of attitude in the music industry.  Here, he focuses on a smaller group of men who worked largely behind the scenes but who became highly influential and recognised figures, at least in part through their skilful use of promotion, the popular press’ obsession with their work and references to their sexuality, illegal for much of their time in the limelight, which made them the most high-profile group of gay men to date.

His main subjects, Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Lionel Bart and Robert Stigwood are subtitled here as “The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties”.  I knew who each of these were prior to reading this book but details were sketchy, with the exception of Joe Meek, the subject of John Repsch’s masterful “Legendary Joe Meek (1989) (a Top 3 read when I got round to it in 2002) and the five star biopic “Telstar”.  All these men knew one another but it is the eccentric outsider Meek who perhaps has the lowest profile here.  They were all innovators who made an indelible impression on the entertainment industry.  Larry Parnes first found unprecedented success with an ex-merchant seaman from Bermondsey, who became Britain’s first rock n roll star, Tommy Steele (it’s hard to fathom nowadays how famous he became in such a short space of time) and then used the formula again and again with a “stable” of renamed boys, (Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Georgie Fame, Vince Eager, Lance Fortune, Dickie Pride etc etc), some of whom took off and some of whom cost their manager much money and stress.  Both Parnes and Epstein were individuals who I would have been happy to have read much more about.  Epstein pulled off an absolute master stroke with The Beatles.  He was inexperienced in artist management and had to learn on the job and nobody was prepared for the impact this group would have.  On the surface very confident, initially, privately he was a mess and winging it continually took its toll with his very early demise aged 32.  Lionel Bart’s “Oliver” propelled him to superstardom and he struggled to follow this up, losing a fortune and Stigwood eventually made it by hanging on in there whilst the others fell by the wayside.

I was particularly fascinated by a man who was linked with all of these, the showbiz lawyer, David Jacobs who seemed to be at the centre of everything for some time.  Things didn’t work out well for him, ultimately, either but I was left with an urge to find out more about him.  Behind their great successes these men had a surprising number of failed ventures but by using publicity, promotion and the media so well (although each faced at times the reverse side of this with press intrusion into their private lives) they could keep their heads above water and attempt to convince the public they were on the verge of discovering the next big thing.  On the fringes are everybody who was anybody in the sixties including the Krays, Judy Garland, Alma Cogan, The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones with David Bowie and Marc Bolan waiting for their time in the spotlight.

It is quite a dense read, as was the last book of his I read, filled with so much information.  Here, a largely chronological approach did trip me up at times keeping track of who was who but it really does shine a light on the time when the entertainment industry in the UK first became huge business and these men were instrumental in that.

The Velvet Mafia was published by Omnibus Press in 2021.

Radical Love – Neil Blackmore (Hutchinson Heinemann 2023)

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Neil Blackmore’s latest novel is set in Georgian London.  Radicalism is in the air- spread by seeds sown in the French Revolution.  Established ideas are being questioned, slavery has been abolished, it seems like the start of a new age.

Only it’s not, the rot is still there and hatred and prejudice still prevalent.  William Wilberforce, celebrated for his achievements in ending slavery still placed black dinner guests behind a screen to keep them separate from the white diners.  Main character and narrator John Church has set up his own place of worship, the Obelisk, to preach tolerance in well-attended services which attracts free thinkers as well as those unimpressed by his motives.  For many the limits come with any suggestion of acceptance for homosexuality and yet molly-houses thrive.  John Church accepts an invitation to attend rooms above a pub where he will attempt to alleviate some of the gay shame and self-hatred by marrying any men who wish to be coupled with one another.  Is he beginning a path of greater acceptance in London or is this just a step too far?

What I like very much is this reclaiming of history, of developing the true stories behind the established facts, as certainly here the novel is based upon actual events.  Over the last few years this has been done very successfully by Black British writers. Paterson Joseph and his “Secret Diaries Of Charles Ignatius Sancho” (2022) and Sarah Collins’ “The Confessions Of Frannie Langton” (2019) immediately spring to mind. Neil Blackmore does this to an extent with black experience but particularly here with gay men’s stories.  Tom Crewe has done similar so successfully earlier this year with “The New Life” (2023) and Blackmore attains a high standard with this.

If you don’t already know about John Church (and I didn’t) greater pleasure will be had from this book by not finding out too much beforehand, especially as in his main character the author has created a gloriously untrustworthy narrator.  We can tell from the start that this is a man of contradictions and it is with great relish that these contradictions are brought to life.

This probably comes as close as a novel is going to get this year to being five stars without me actually awarding my top rating.  (I don’t believe that was because the review copy I was sent was so badly formatted that it did affect my reading flow and thus some of my enjoyment, luckily the book rattles on at such a pace the effects of this were diminished) but I think with John Church so central we only see the other characters from his (sometimes) off-skew perspective which doesn’t give them as much chance to shine as I would have liked.  The radical aspects come across strongly, are well balanced and the ideas very accessible (more so than Tom Crewe’s novel, actually, which is set in a repressed Victorian London of the late nineteenth century).  I also feel that, Neil Blackmore is here just like a cat that toys with a mouse for just a little bit too long before going for the kill in his development of his plot.  It is full of appalling hypocrisy, there’s hope and despair but above all a vivid bringing to life of a forgotten man whose attempts to find and bring love to Georgian London produce this extraordinary tale.

Radical Love will be published on 1st June 2023 by Hutchinson Heinemann.  Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy.