Tag: literary fiction

#BookReview #Ad The New Life by Tom Crewe @ChattoBooks

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The New LifeAbout the Book

Two Victorian marriages, two dangerous love affairs, one extraordinary partnership . . .

After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John Addington, a married man, has met Frank, a working-class printer. Meanwhile Henry Ellis’s wife Edith has fallen in love with a woman – who wants Edith all to herself.

When in 1894 John and Henry decide to write a revolutionary book together, intended to challenge convention and the law, they are both caught in relationships stalked by guilt and shame.

Yet they share a vision of a better world, one that will expand possibilities for men and women everywhere. Their daring book threatens to throw John and Henry, and all those around them, into danger.

How far should they go to win personal freedoms? And how high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?’

Format: eARC (384 pages)                Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Publication date: 12th January 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The ‘New Life’ which John Addington and Henry Ellis are in search of is one of social, personal and sexual freedom where, in particular, homosexuality (referred to as ‘sexual inversion’) is no longer illegal but accepted as a natural variant of human sexuality. They begin writing a book together intended to demonstrate their case through a combination of scientific evidence and personal case studies. This collaboration takes place mostly via correspondence with the two men hardly ever meeting.

Their motivations for writing the book are different. For Henry, it’s more an intellectual pursuit in line with his beliefs in the need for a more open society in which less conventional relationships – like his marriage to Edith, which is unconsummated – can flourish.  For John it’s deeply personal as his life has been one of hiding his homosexual desires behind the facade of a conventional marriage. He feels he has got to the point where he can do that no longer.

What the two men have in common is the existence of a third party in their marriages. John has taken as his lover a young working class man called Frank, eventually installing him in the family home under the guise of him being his secretary. It doesn’t fool anyone, not least John’s wife, Catherine. Henry’s wife, Edith, has a close friend named Angelica with whom she spends much time since Edith and Henry live apart.

Given homosexuality is a criminal offence, both men are taking a great risk in publishing their book. This becomes even greater when, shortly before publication, Oscar Wilde is arrested, tried and convicted of gross indecency with men and sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour.  John and Henry are presented with a dilemma. Should they go ahead and publish because they believe in the principles they are espousing or should considerations of safety for themselves and their families prevail?  John is determined to press ahead with publication regardless of the consequences, even if it means the end of his marriage and public disclosure of his homosexuality with everything that might follow from that.

I found Henry quite a tragic figure. Painfully shy, he is touchingly devoted to his wife and believes fervently in the principles of personal freedom. John, on the other hand, although clearly deeply unhappy, seemed to me to be thoroughly self-absorbed. I could understand his desire to be true to himself but he just seemed so oblivious to the impact of his crusade on other people, including Frank, the man he professes to love, who also risks imprisonment if the nature of their relationship is revealed.

More than anything my sympathies were with John’s wife, Catherine. Having silently tolerated her husband’s homosexuality whilst bringing up their three daughters, she has to put up with him bringing his lover into their household and now faces the prospect of the family’s public disgrace. I definitely couldn’t blame her for coming to the conclusion that enough is enough. ‘I am too tired. I have spent so long in fear for you. Fearing with you, or so it once seemed. I have dreaded your disgrace, your being made to suffer – I have ached with the dread of it. It has made me old. But you are not frightened now. You wish to take greater and greater risks. That is your business. You may do it on your own.’

I think the author is particularly good at depicting the erotic charge between John and Frank, and the release John feels at finally being able to express freely his sexual desires. Much of the writing is in keeping with the style of the period in which the book is set but there are occasional flashes of more unrestrained descriptive prose. ‘They walked, fitting in the cracks and gaps that opened between the men and women on the streets. Beneath buildings black as slate, unblemished stone showing like rubbings of chalk. With the traffic, that surged and stalled, slipped and rushed; that strained and rolled and chanted and drummed, that clapped and dashed its rhythms on the road.’

The New Life is an intricate, detailed and thought-provoking exploration of the search for sexual freedom and equality in Victorian Britain.  It’s quite an intense read, a little slow to get going and does contain some sexually explicit scenes (not least the bravura opening chapter) but is clearly the work of a talented author.

My thanks to Chatto & Windus for my review copy via NetGalley.

In three words: Thought-provoking, intense, assured

Tom CreweAbout the Author

Tom Crewe was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction.

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#BookReview #Ad The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually by Helen Cullen

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The Truth Must Dazzle GraduallyAbout the Book

On an island off the west coast of Ireland, the Moone family gathers.

Maeve is an actor, struggling with her most challenging role yet – as a mother to four children. Murtagh, her devoted husband, is a potter whose craft brought them from the city to this rural life.

In the wake of one fateful night, the Moone siblings must learn the story of who their parents truly are, and what has happened since their first meeting, years before, outside Trinity College in Dublin.

We watch as one love story gives rise to another, until we arrive at a future that none of the Moones could have predicted. Except perhaps Maeve herself.

Format: ebook (325 pages)               Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 20th August 2020 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

When I read Helen Cullen’s debut novel The Lost Letters of William Woolf back in 2018 I commented that the real achievement of the book was the way she explored the dynamics of the relationship between William and his wife, Clare. It was a portrait of a marriage that had gone slightly astray because they had lost the ability to communicate openly and honestly about their feelings, hopes and ambitions.  

The author repeats that feat – in fact, with even greater skill –  in The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually. The book depicts the relationship between Maeve and Murtagh and, in particular, Maeve’s struggles with being the sort of mother to her four children she would like to be. In fact, to be the sort of person she would like to be. 

Following the tragic events of the opening chapter, the reader is taken back in time to witness Maeve and Murtagh’s first meeting and the blossoming of their relationship. It’s not hard to understand what attracts Murtagh to the beautiful, spirited but mercurial Maeve, a budding actor. In reality though Maeve’s life is something of a performance. As she observes, ‘Here people see the theatre student, the vinyl collector, the poet, Murtagh’s girlfriend, the American, the actress; so many different things, and none of them are the sick girl, or the other far worse things we know some folks called me’. 

When Murtagh is given the opportunity to pursue his career as a potter on Inis Óg, a small island off the coast of Galway in Ireland, it means Maeve giving up her own aspirations. It’s just one of the things that creates the first small fissures in Maeve’s mental state. Those fissures will gradually expand until the whole edifice comes crashing down. As the book progresses, we witness heartbreaking moments such as Maeve recording in her journal her ‘good’ days and ‘bad’ days and finding the second have become more numerous than the first. She worries about the impact the days when despair overwhelms her is having on her children, and on Murtagh in particular. ‘Murtagh is so loyal, he would never leave me. He would endure the challenge of living with me and my moods and my difficulties until the end of time if I let him.’  

It leads her to take a decision born out of love but which won’t appear that way to her family. Just the opposite in fact. It’s only years later that some kind of understanding dawns, bringing together a family which has become fractured, resentful and distant from one another. I absolutely fell in love with Murtagh who is the most wonderful character. I felt I shared with him every moment of joy, every moment of grief and silently cheered when he reflected, ‘There was room in his life for one more dream, maybe.’

If this is making it sound like a story of interminable sadness, I can reassure you it is not. There are moments of humour too and the book ends on the most wonderfully uplifting note. I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears at some of the sadder moments but also got slightly misty-eyed at the end. I thought The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually was wonderful and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading it.

I received a review copy courtesy of Penguin via NetGalley.

In three words: Powerful, insightful, moving

Helen CullenAbout the Author

Helen Cullen is an Irish writer living in London. Helen worked at RTE (Ireland’s national broadcaster) for seven years before moving to London in 2010. Her debut novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf, was published by Penguin in July 2018 in the UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa, and published in America by Harper Collins in June 2019. The novel is also available in translation in numerous foreign markets including Italy, Germany, Russia, Greece and Israel where it hit the bestseller charts. The Lost Letters of William Woolf has also been optioned for television by Mainstreet Pictures. The novel also garnered Helen a Best Newcomer nomination in the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018. Her second novel, The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually, was published in Ireland and the UK and as The Dazzling Truth in the USA and Canada in August 2020.

Helen holds an M.A. Theatre Studies from UCD, an M.A. English Literature at Brunel University and commenced a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia in October 2020. She is now writing full-time and also contributes to the Irish Times newspaper and Sunday Times Magazine. (Photo/bio: Author website)

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