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Showing results for tags 'novel'.
Found 16 results
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Charles is the apple of his mother’s eye, born in Cornwall just after the end of the First World War. He becomes the focus of his mother’s life after his father dies from TB. But Charles does not want to be a “mother’s boy” and when war breaks out, he leaves his claustrophobic life in Teignmouth, enlisting in the navy as a coder. The title of this novel has a double meaning and Patrick Gale uses both of them with skill and breadth. Charles is a boy raised as his mother’s sole outlet, the sole reason for her life, though Charles, as an adolescent, becomes aware that he is attracted to other boys, but he knows some of those boys could betray him and so much of his attraction is illegal. This novel is set in the time between the First and Second World Wars and Gale captures the repression and social order of that time. Charles, an intelligent boy, can only stay in education until his time at grammar school ends because his mother cannot afford for him to stay any longer. Charles is also aware that his attractions are illegal, he displays a distaste for a friend who embraces his attractions, though that distaste is more driven by fear. Joining the navy is an eye-opening experience, both professionally and emotionally. So many of his experiences affect him deeply, but he also meets other serving men who are far more comfortable with their desires and their openness pulls him along with them. Gale captures the repression of the inter-war years but he also shows how the Second World War, with its mixing of people from all different backgrounds, brushed away so much of that repression and so many people’s lives benefited from that. His descriptions of wartime life are some of the most memorable parts of this novel. This is Gale at the highest of his skills. He sympathetically and insightfully writes about his characters here, drawing characters that are all too recognisable, but he does not forget that he is writing about a very different time than today. It was so refreshing to read a novel set in the 1930s and 1940s where modern-day attitudes do not bleed into the narrative and characters. This reaches right through to the novel’s ending. Here is a novel well worth the time it took to read, not a moment wasted. Find it here on Amazon
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Book Review: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
It is wartime England and in a south coast village an old man watches a boy, with a brightly coloured parrot, walk along a train line. The boy is silent, a Jewish refugee from the horrors in Europe, while the parrot cannot keep quiet, happily speaking long sentences in German. The old man, who remains unnamed throughout the novel, is a famous “Consulting Detective” who has retired to the countryside to keep bees. This encounter with Linus Steinmen, the mute boy, draws the old man into his life and occupants of the home, the local vicarage, were the boy lives. And then another member of the vicarage’s household is murdered. Here Chabon has tried to write a “new” Sherlock Holmes story but as an old man no longer interested in crime. The Second World War setting is interesting but not enough on its own to carry this book, neither is the character and situation of the old man. The character just feels old, there isn’t any regret, loss or even introspection of an old man looking back on his life. The plot did not have enough mystery to hold my attention; the mystery here did not feel important enough to push the plot forward and there wasn’t enough plot, without it, to hold my attention. Unfortunately, the other characters are not strong enough either. So many of the occupants of the vicarage were interchangeable because they were so poorly drawn. The only character who stood out was the vicar’s wife, but that was mainly because she was the only female character there. The book felt like a clever writing exercise, to reimagine Sherlock Holmes in the twilight of his life, but its execution was far too clever, without the feeling for the characters. There was too much extraneous information, as if Chabon was showing off the research he did for this book, but there was so little feeling that these characters were actually living during a war. These people just did not come alive for me. I did not find here the characterisation I have enjoyed in other of Chabon’s books. Sometimes writing exercises should just stay that, sometimes they do not make good books. Find it here on Amazon -
The plot of this novel is riddled with cliches. A novelist, Caz, who is staying in a country cottage to write her next book. She meets a young fan, nine-year-old Theo. Through Theo she meets his mother Ann and finds out that Theo's father Alan was murdered three years ago in strange circumstances and the killer was never caught. Then Theo confesses to Caz that he killed his father. Caz and her boyfriend Will set about finding out who really killed Alan. They do and everyone lives happily ever after, except the murderer of course. After finishing this novel all I felt was that I was waist deep in clichés. Atkins doesn't seem to have any understanding of the nature of human emotions. Her characters only acted within the narrow limits of her very thin plot. I found no insights, no character development or emotional depth in this novel. All I found was a very predictable plot and propaganda for family values. The novel ends with both female characters walking off into marriage and the murderer turns out to be an archetypical threat to family values: he is "mentally retarded" (Sic), a petty thief, envious of a family man, probably a paedophile and is dying from Aids. At best Atkins' characterisation is one-dimensional. A writer who thinks of herself as a free spirit yet happily walks off into marriage. A child genius who talks and acts a like a small adult, not a real child. Without any explanation, halfway through the novel one character is revealed as a wife-beater. The characters just move within Atkins’ plot without any real human emotions. The minor characters were so badly written as to be patronising. A feminist who is dismissed by a man's "winning smile". A caretaker who meekly actually tipped his hat to a "lady". An Anglican priest who’s unmarried, opposed to women’s ordination and can’t even boil water. If there hadn't been a mention of Caz's laptop, I would have believed this novel was set in some idyllic, middle-class 1950s fantasy. A village straight off a chocolate box, the village shop is still open, friendly yokels everywhere and no problems with commuters moving in. Who allowed such a badly over-written novel into print? It is littered with flowery and overblown passages that serve no purpose. The dialogue is stilted and flat, the description clichéd and the characters only there to serve the plot, a very unoriginal one at that. I haven't read such a bad novel in a very long time, but I don't intend doing so again so whatever Atkins' next novel is I won't be reading it. My advice, avoid this novel at all cost. There are so many better writers out there to spend time with. POSTSCRIPT: I originally wrote this review back in 1997 and it was the first review of mine that was ever published
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Book Review: Going Down in La-La Land by Andy Zeffer
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
Adam, an aspiring actor, makes the trip from New York to LA in search of fame and fortune. What he finds is a trip into the underside of fame in LA. Here is a modern-day Rake’s Progress; Adam (the narrator) arrives in LA with such high hopes, he has the looks and talent to be a star, but he finds an unfriendly city where he can’t get his foot on the bottom rung of the showbusiness ladder. This novel could have been a pro-faced, and even homophobic, grime tale, warning about the “evils” of Hollywood. Instead, Zeffer’s insightful but equally humorous prose lifts this novel into a far more enjoyable read. Adam’s self-deprecating humour is refreshing and helps make this such a readable book; even as his career spirals down, he still has his eyes set on being a star, imagining himself (when he finally becomes that star) confessing to his sordid past on yet another chat show. Adam’s spiral downwards, until he ends up working in gay porn because he is so broke, is handled well and is all too believable. What is also so believable is his big break, as the personal assistant/closeted boyfriend to a TV star, and the scandal he gets caught up in. This novel provides fascinating insights into the different levels of showbusiness in Hollywood. How the real stars treat those people below them, but those people’s work keeps them a star. How everyone in LA seems to be part of showbusiness, one way or another. How the only time he is treated with any dignity is when he works in gay porn. Zeffer gives this novel a downbeat but all too real ending, unlike the Hollywood ending of the film based on this novel, leaving the impression that this was a time of madness in the narrator’s life before he returned to the real world when he left LA. This novel is very much based on fact, on Zeffer’s own experiences as a would-be actor in Hollywood; he and the narrator share the same surname, but he does not present us with a novel-as-act-of-revenge, neither is this a cautionary tale. Instead, Zeffer presents this novel as a story that happened without any more judgment. This is a novel for all of us who never believed those rags-to-riches Hollywood stories. Find it here on Amazon-
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Book Review: A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
“A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.” So reads the announcement in the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette that morning. That evening, the local neighbours all dutifully turn up at Little Paddocks, all with their different excuses for being there. At 6.30 p.m., without warning, all the lights go out and… This is the beginning of one of Agatha Christie’s most intriguing novels that is firmly rooted in post-war Britain. She chose to set it in the classic, golden age of crime setting of an English country village. But this is a place very changed by the Second World War. No longer is it a place where everyone knows everyone else. This is a place of strangers. The war caused such upheaval; many people left the village, many never to return, and newcomers have moved in, people whom everyone else has to accept are who they claim to be without “knowing their people”. Christie uses this as a strong thread to her plot, are these people even who they say they are? Her intriguing plot is served well by the tone Christie creates in this novel. At first it is light-hearted and almost comic, the surprise and speculation in the characters’ reactions to the announcement of a murder, none of them believing it is anything sinister. Even after the first murder, she maintains this light tone; the victim is a stranger and certainly not a “good type” of person. But slowly the novel darkens; the second murder is too close to home and casts a dark shadow over the story. Christie handles this well; the grief of some of the characters is uncomfortable to read. This novel uses several plots trails that will be familiar to Christie readers, but here she certainly plays around with them. The village setting but with a cast of characters very different from her pre-war novels, her use of sexism to aid her plot and having the detective gather all the suspects together in one place to announce who the murderer is. Christie created this convention with her first novel, though she used it sparingly in her subsequent works nowhere near as much as the film adaptions of her works would lead us to believe. Here, though, it is the police inspector who gathers together the suspects, not Miss Marple, and it is not to unmask the killer but to lay a trap for them. This novel also benefits from having Miss Marple as its detective, rather than Poirot. Poirot was always the star of the novels featuring him, while Miss Marple was so often one of the supporting characters, watching the events from the sidelines. Here Christie uses her to her best, aiding the plot but also giving the other characters chance to breathe by not being in every scene. In the centre of all this is a portrait of a lesbian couple, whom all the other characters except without question. Only at the end, after tragedy has struck, do we see the depth of their love. Agatha Christie might not have been the greatest of literary writers, but what she did do she did so well. She knew how to plot her novels; she created twists that never left the reader feeling cheated. She laid just enough clues so that once the twist occurs you can feel, “Oh that makes sense now.” She also knew the characters she wrote about, the upper middle-class English, though her novels also chronicle the changes in English society. She might not have been the finest descriptive writer but she knew how to create characters with dialog and used that effectively. This certainly is a classic Christie, plot, characters and setting all come together to make a fascinating read. I challenge you to work out who the murderer is, until they are revealed and then it all makes horrible sense. Happy reading Find it here on Amazon- 3 comments
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Book Review: Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
This is Carrie Fisher’s insider novel about the ups and many downs of surviving and living in Hollywood. Suzanne Vale, the central character here and Carrie Fisher’s obvious alter ego, is a Hollywood actress, but not an A list one, trying to survive through a year in her life. The novel begins with Suzanne admitted to rehab following a drug overdose, drugs that she liked too much. The novel then charts the events of the following year as Suzanne navigates a relationship with a film producer, returns to work as an actress, fills in her days, survives Hollywood parties and makes the required appearance on a TV chat show. Though none of this may sound interesting, and could sound self-indulgent, it is Fisher’s wit and insight that make this a fascinating read. The character of Suzanne Vale is the driver of this book. It is her character and internal conflicts, as she learns to live without drugs, that hold the attention and it is also Fisher’s sharp wit that makes the book sparkle. If you enjoyed the film adaption, don’t expect the book to be the same, Suzanne Vale’s mother is a very minor character here. From the beginning, Fisher is experimenting with the novel’s form. Only part of it is written in the traditional third-person narrative. One section is written in a first-person narrative, Suzanne Vale’s journal, one section is written in dialogue only and another in letter form. This style can be off-putting, a different style with almost each section, but this book is worth the effect. Fisher’s humour is sharp and always funny, but her insights into trying to survive as a B/C list actress in Hollywood are fascinating. This was Fisher’s first novel, which certainly explains her experimenting with different styles, and in places it does feel like she was learning different writing styles, but it is still a strong first novel and well worth the read. This novel is a writer beginning to make her mark on the world and not some actor’s vanity project. If you loved the film version then read this novel as a companion to it, more than the same plot in novel form. If you haven’t seen the film, then here is a fascinating first novel. Find it here on Amazon-
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Book Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
Santiago Nasar is to die, to pay with his life for his crime, and the twin brothers of Angela Vicario will make him pay. The whole town knows this will happen and why, but no one steps forward to prevent it. Why? This book has a fascinating premise but just fails to follow through with it. The problem lies at the heart of this novel; its structure makes for a cold and distant storytelling. It is narrated by a nameless narrator who has returned to the area twenty-seven years after the murder of Santiago Nasar. It is through this narrator’s eyes that we see everything, but he wasn’t present when Santiago Nasar died and is relying on second-hand and third-hand accounts. The narrator is a cold and emotionless character and filtering this story through his eyes makes this an equally cold and emotionless story. We are told what the characters did, what physical actions they took, but we are not informed of their motivations or their feelings. We never get under the skin of any of the characters here. This could have been a fascinating read, exploring the emotions and motives of the people who did nothing as they watched a man walk to his death. This novel could have got under the skin of the characters waiting to murder Santiago Nasar. We could have even seen events from his point of view. Instead we had none of that, which left me so uninvolved with this story. I know this book is called a modern classic but I found it a very cold and unsatisfying read, and this book could have been so much more. Find it here on Amazon- 6 comments
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Book Review: A Demon in My View by Ruth Rendell
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
It’s the mid-1970s, Northwest London, and an old town house has been divided up into bedsits and small flats. In one of the flats lives Arthur Johnson, a dull middle-aged bookkeeper. A repressed and socially awkward man, who never learnt how to talk to women, he hides a darker and violent side, but he keeps it in check by strangling the “woman” hidden in the house’s cellar. Then Anthony Johnson, a doctoral psychology student in his early twenties, who accidentally shares the same surname, moves into one of the house’s bedsits. These two men’s lives collide as Anthony literally unearths Arthur’s secrets. This novel is Ruth Rendell at her best. The plot is seen from the point of view of Arthur Johnson and Anthony Johnson, but the other characters who populate the lodging house are just as lonely and dysfunctional as Arthur Johnson, yet their lives are desperate in different ways. But it is Anthony Johnson, in his innocent and almost naive way, who changes the equilibrium of Arthur Johnson’s life, causing things to spiral out of control and leading to violence and murder, in a dark plot that Rendell handles all too well. Here she captures the dark and grubby life of mid-1970s London; a world of corner shops, self-service laundrettes, overflowing dust bins and lack of amenities. What Rendell captures even more is the inner workings of a psychopath. Not just why this man wants to and feels he needs to kill, but also the childhood sadism that led to the development of his psychopath personality. She seems to know this far too well. This novel has a theme that Rendell would return to in many different ways in other novels, an innocent person accidentally and unwittingly setting off a chain of events that will lead to tragedy, but it is still a shockingly original novel with an unnerving portrayal of a psychopath. A novel to be read at least with the doors locked, if not the lights left on too. Find it here on Amazon-
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Harry Starks is the quintessential 1960s London gangster, an Eastender, thuggish, violent, sharply dressed and homosexual, but he also loves Ethel Merman, Judy Garland and opera music. This novel tells his story from the 1960s until the early 1980s, portraying the changing face of London’s organised crime. In the 1960s he’s a racketeer, running cons and criminal corruption, but he has a pathetic desire for respectability too, first through his nightclub, at the wrong end of Soho, and then through foreign investments. By the 1970s he has become a porn king, but his crown is tarnished and grubby, with “bent coppers” snapping at his heels. In the 1980s it all catches up with him. This novel isn’t narrated by Harry Starks but by five different people from his life, in five different sections. They are the toy boy boyfriend, the disgraced lord, the petty criminal, the actress (the failed blonde bombshell) and the university lecturer. This isn’t an original idea but Arnott handles it with skill and insight. Each narrator has their own distinctive voice and a distinctive view of Harry Starks and his life, giving their own insights into him. But each narrator, in their own different way, is corrupted and changed by their relationship with Harry Starks. With this style, Arnott paints an interesting picture of a complicated character; Harry Starks is more than just another stereotyped Eastend gangster. This novel also paints a picture of a very changing world. Harry Starks is a crime boss, but his criminal empire is a changing one. The crimes he is living off at the beginning of the 1960s are different to the ones that make up his empire in the 1970s. With this changing world of crime, we’re given a window onto the changing world of London society in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a fascinating read and an equally interesting reread. There is so much here, both in the fictional world and the real world and real-life personalities that also make cameo appearances here. The description of Judy Garland in London, very much at the end of her life and her career, is so pathetic as to be heart-breaking. What is most memorable here, though, is the character of Harry Starks, a much more complicated and nuanced character than is usually presented as a crime boss in fiction. Find it here on Amazon
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Back in 1986, Michael Nava published his first novel to feature the West Coast American lawyer Henry Rios. Over the years that followed, Henry Rios featured in seven novels and all of them have been highly readable and enjoyable. But Henry Rios is not the clean-cut, all-American male lawyer who breathlessly solves murders. Henry Rios is a defense lawyer who usually defends the underdog, but that is where the similarities end. Henry Rios is Mexican, from a forcefully working-class family and gay. Ghosts of a macho-abusive father and a pathetically Catholic mother constantly haunt him. For many years he was estranged from his lesbian sister (his only living relative). He is an AIDS-widow, having found and then lost his lover to AIDS over the course of these novels. His outspoken views have made him as many enemies as friends. This man has enough emotional baggage to fill an SUV. This man is a real character. He is everything Perry Mason wasn't. Rag and Bone is the last Henry Rios novel and so I started to read it with a heavy heart, so much had I enjoyed the previous novels. But this is a novel with which Henry Rios leaves the literary world on a high note. Rag and Bone opens with Rios collapsing, in court, with a heart attack. While he is recovering from this, slowly regaining his confidence, he repairs his fragile relationship with his sister, Elena. This leads to Elena telling him she had a child while in college and has not yet come to terms with her sexuality, so she gave the child up for adoption. Later, when Rios is home, his newfound niece and her young son turn up on his doorstep. She is on the run from the police, who want her for the murder of her husband. As Rios takes on her case, he also meets a man, John, a builder who was once married, with whom he starts a tentative relationship. The main thrust of this novel isn't the murder Henry Rios investigates; that takes second place to the main theme, which is the mid-life change he makes following his heart attack. It is also about him building a family around him, not the apple pie propaganda of the far right but a real-life family. Rios also becomes a substitute father for his great-nephew. Nava sensitively and insightfully writes about a middle-aged gay man finally coming to terms with his life and exorcising the ghosts of his past. He writes with great insight about Rios' heart attack, not just the medical details but also how it changes a person's priorities through 180 degrees. He also explores what it means to be a father figure/role model for a young child. Not least are the complex and alive relationships in this novel, they are more than mere plot devices, from Rios' rebuilding those with his sister and niece to the emotional minefield with his great-nephew and the tender but no less difficult relationship with his new lover. If you are looking for a tense courtroom mystery, this isn't the novel for you. If you enjoy a novel that explores how people react to unusual events in their lives, how their lives are changed and rebuilt, then I certainly recommend this novel. Find it here on Amazon:
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Book Review: State of Independence by Robert Farrar
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
This is a gay comedy of manners and that can be a genre. It is the early 1990s and Lenny, in his early twenties, is trying to find his way through gay London. He lives in a gay house share; he works as waiter at a restaurant and dreams of finding a boyfriend and a better job. He has run away to London from his suburban Evangelical Christian home; unfortunately, he might not be in Kansas anymore but London is certainly not the Emerald City. Lenny, the narrator here, is a likable and engaging character, quickly winning the reader over onto his side, making us root for his success. The humour ranges from broad to the very poignant, in some places lingering long in the memory. But the most memorable parts of this novel are when it turns dark and inward looking. Unfortunately, Robert Farrar does not make the most of these dark moments, exploring Lenny’s inner life when they happen. This novel did ask a question about sexual fluidity long before we were even discussing it. With this novel, Robert Farrar showed he was an emerging talent, certainly a writer to watch out for. Unfortunately, he only wrote one other novel and that is impossible to find. I don’t know why he stopped writing, but we lost so many writers like him when we lost all our small and medium-range publishers. At least we have this novel, but what would Robert Farrar have gone on to write? Find it here on Amazon:-
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Book Review: Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
It is 1979 and Alan Groombridge, the manager of a small, provincial town bank, has a fantasy. One day, he’ll steal all the money from the bank’s safe and run away from his suffocating life. A life with a wife and children he no longer loves and doesn’t even like. But he only gets as far as taking the money out of the safe, when he is alone in the bank, putting the money in his pocket, fantasying about where that money will take him, before putting the money back. Then one day, as he holds the money from the safe, the bank is robbed at gunpoint. But these robbers, Marty and Nigel, are almost comically inept; they end up taking the bank’s cashier Joyce and one other employee hostage and leaving with a fraction of the bank’s money. On a wild impulse, Alan runs away with the rest of the money to fulfil his own fantasy. This is only the premise of this novel. This is no comic story of a failed bank robbery but instead a downward spiral of four characters swept up in a moment’s bad decision. Ruth Rendell charts these characters’ lives and bad decisions with spot-on physiological skill; her plot comes out of her characters’ psychology rather than forcing them into her plot. She unnervingly captures the changing dynamics in her characters’ relationships, the shifting power dynamics. An illegally acquired gun becomes a lightning rod for the power between three of the characters, corrupting and ultimately destroying them. This isn’t a conventional crime novel, where a crime is committed and a detective must solve it. This is a novel about the effects of a crime, the effects it has on all the lives touched by that crime, the guilty and the innocent. Rendell wrote these psychological crime novels alongside her Chief Inspector Wexford detective novels and later alongside her Barbara Vine novels. At their best, and this novel is her at her best, these psychological novels are refreshingly interesting and darkly original, and several of them were her best novels. Make Death Love Me is an uncomfortably original novel and, if you have never read one, a good place to start reading Rendell’s psychological crime novels. Find it here on Amazon-
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Book Review: The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
Beryl Bainbridge, at her best, always had a dark view of life. It wasn’t just the unhappiness of life she wrote about so well but the pain and regret under that unhappiness. This novel is a fine example of the darkness she found in ordinary people’s lives. It is set in Liverpool in 1945. The war is finally turning and the city is awash with American GIs, but this is still the world of ration books, shortages and make do and mend. In this cold and austere world, naïve and immature Rita lives with her two aunts, Nellie and Margo. Her mother has died and her father is incapable of raising a daughter. Rita dreams of being a GI bride, her head was turned by the fantasy of the Hollywood films she escaped to in the local Picture House. At a party organised by a neighbour she meets her own GI. She rapidly falls in love with him, though she is far more in love with the idea of having her own GI than with the man himself. Her aunts, though, are certain that this young man is not suitable for their niece. This is not romantic fiction, it is a drama of downtrodden lives; Rita’s relationship with her GI has no breath of romance about it. The aunts’ lives are as dull and washed out as the wartime city around them. Nellie is the matronly character forced to be the head of the family. Margo is what was once called “blousy”, an unmarried middled-aged woman who behaves as if she was still young, though here she is no caricature; she is a woman who is desperate not to let life pass her by, even though it is rapidly doing so. The male characters are very much secondary characters here, but this is a novel about the women at the heart of it and it is no less a novel for that. This was the first Bainbridge novel I read. As a teenager, I was wary of literary fiction, finding it highbrow and inaccessible. With this novel, I was gripped by its dark opening and carried along by its dark plot. I was surprised that a novel with the plaudits this one had would also have such an interesting and readable plot. The characters were also all too recognisable. Rereading it recently, I found it had lost none of its dark appeal. This is Beryl Bainbridge at her height. Though a short novel, none of its pages are wasted and it still lingers in the memory long after I finished reading it. Find it on Amazon-
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Book Review: Living Upstairs by Joseph Hansen
Drew Payne posted a blog entry in Words, Words and Words
It is Hollywood, Los Angeles, 1943 and 19-year-old Nathan Reed’s life is turned upside down. Nathan, an innocent who has recently moved to Los Angeles, has everything changed when Hoyt Stubblefield ambles into his life. Within a week of their first meeting, in the Hollywood Boulevard bookshop where Nathan works, Nathan is living with Hoyt in Hoyt’s run-down upstairs apartment and sharing his bed. This marks the start of a whole new life for Nathan, an adventurous roller coaster ride of experiences. Hoyt, an artist and painter, introduces him to a whole new world of ideas, books, music, painting and the underground world that was gay life in 1940s Los Angeles. In return, Nathan is his pupil, model and lover. But this is no easy, romantic love story. Hoyt is as mysterious and secretive as he is handsome and charming, leading Nathan into an increasingly fraught and confusing life. Joseph Hansen is best known for his series of detective novels, featuring Dave Brandstetter (one of literature’s first openly gay detectives), but with Living Upstairs he again proves he was an accomplished novelist. The central relationship, between Nathan and Hoyt, is drawn with sensitivity and care. This is Nathan’s first relationship and Hansen perfectly captures that heady rush of lust and romance that so often makes up our first love affair—in this case it is also all on Nathan’s side. This novel is also full of other extremely well-drawn characters, the kind of characters that are not present in Hollywood films of the time or later. Hansen shows his ability to capture his characters in one or two well-drawn paragraphs, so from the moment we meet them we recognise the person. The atmosphere of this novel is evocative of a very different time and place. Not just period detail, though there is plenty of that, but this novel also has a deep feeling of its time and place. Hansen knew this world well, the fringe world of 1940s Hollywood, not just the underground homosexual world but also that of American communists and the poor on the fringes of tinsel town, and evokes it equally as well (the scene where Nathan and Hoyt, in a desperate bid to raise money, sell a pair of homoerotic paintings to a deeply closeted gay man is so telling). The novel is written in the present tense and solely from Nathan’s perspective. This style of writing is not to everyone’s taste, but I would suggest persevering with it because otherwise you might miss an excellent novel. This is Joseph Hansen at his very best and not to be passed over. Find it here on Amazon -
Flower’s stand-up comic career is dead on its feet, Martha is pregnant but can’t remember who the father is, and Sarah’s slobbish boyfriend Billy has started to hit her. These three friends’ lives are intertwined by their friendship but they are also drawn together by Billy’s violent behaviour. Women friends rallying around together to support a friend in trouble is almost a staple of so much Chic-Lit, but Jo Brand takes this premise and turns it into a darkly comic novel. This novel doesn’t sparkle with coffee shops and boutiques, this is a much gritter world of pubs, dirty flats and dingy comedy clubs, and it really benefits from it. Here Jo Brand writes about a world that she knows well, her description of life on the bottom rung of the comedy club circuit is uncomfortably real. She also handles the relationships in this novel well, the friendship between the women and the nature of their relationships with their boyfriends. They all have the ring of real and messy relationships. This was Jo Brand’s first novel and she creates and handles her characters well. There are plot twists that are also handled well, the characters not reacting to them out-of-character and the characters not having insights outside of their characterisation, no one suddenly shows insight out of the blue. Her writing style does owe a lot to writing comedic material, the jokes often coming from the author’s voice rather than the characters. There are too many similes in her text; although many of them are very funny, they quickly start getting in the way of the story, and fewer would have been much better. The ending had an almost filmic set-piece quality to it, neatly tying all the plot strands. A messier ending may have suited the story better. This was a first novel, and many writers learn their craft in their first novel, but its quality does bode well for her other novels after this one. Find it here on Amazon
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Playlist (YouTube) Playlist (YouTube) Playlist (YouTube) Alan Matt Craig Hubris reading order: Alan - after the final chapter of Nemesis: Because I Want You. Matt - between chapters 4 and 5 of Nemesis: Soulmates Never Die. Craig - after chapter 8 of Nemesis: Soulmates Never Die. Alan & Matt - after the final chapter of Nemesis: Soulmates Never Die. Patrick - after chapter 12 of Nemesis: Loud Like Love. Devon - after the final chapter of Nemesis: Loud Like Love (can well be read before the epilogue).
