I read this novel again over the last few days. It bears comparison to any other novel you can name. Set in Dublin, this matchless story encompasses history, philosophy, heartache; it gives a glimpse of the kind of poverty that Ireland endured for so long; it spans the highest and lowest classes of an incredibly convoluted class structure; it teaches LGBTQ history; and it breaks your heart with a love story so fine, involving three amazing people who are caught up in each other’s lives at a particular volatile moment of Irish rebellion. It is indescribably great. O’Neill has an ear for wordplay, dialogue, dialect. His writing is everything. The story of Doyler and Jim, and then added to them the intricacies of MacMurrough, classes itself among the very best writing, the very best love stories, the very best evocations of world, place, and time, that any reader could ever want. I wanted to remember the story amidst my current reading of romance novels, and this book reminded me that love comes into any book as tenderly as in the greatest romances, when the writer is as able as Jamie O’Neill. Reading it the second time was even richer than the first.
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
There is no reason to berate a book for failing to do things it never sets out to do. This is a romance novel, straight up. There are scenes that are affecting and work well. The writing in some of these scenes is solid. The naïveté of the whole can be explained by the fact that the book is a fairy tale about falling in love with a prince. These are not aspects of the novel that I admire because I don’t think they’re executed very well. But they work for a lot of people. For my taste, the book is sloppy in form and thin in character. It’s hard to believe in any of these people. It reads like the fan fiction that it so often references. The book simply didn’t work for me.
Husband Material by Alexis Hall
While I am reading romance novels of various kinds at the moment, I have not been tempted to read any sequels, until this one. In some ways I think that was a mistake. Having enjoyed Boyfriend Material, I was curious to see what would happen in the followup, especially since the title implied a marriage. What happens in the sequel, of course, is what happened in volume one. All the jokes are repeated from the first volume. Luc tells jokes that are misunderstood by his colleagues; Priya and the gang ride around in the truck while she berates people; Odile and Judy are hopelessly charming; papa puts in a brief and disappointing appearance. Oliver and Luc fight and fake fight and threaten to come apart. All of this is still engaging and funny because Alexis Hall writes reliable comedy. There are still parts where the joke gets stretched. All that is okay if okay is all right with you. But the book does a lot of preaching. Internalized homophobia, theories of gay marriage, who is a good gay and how to be a good gay. Plus all the buzzwords of gender today. None of this is egregious but neither is it engaging. So by the end of the book I was tired of the whole story. Which is sad because the last few pages are one of the best parts of the novel and the image of Oliver and Luc gleefully fleeing their own wedding is daring and worked really well for me. I’m not a particular fan of marriage to begin with, so I liked their stand. (Let me add lest it be misunderstood that if people are going to get married and marriage is destined to be a thing then it ought to be open to everybody, I do support that. Jeez. See what I mean? This is the kind of book that makes you write a sentence like that.) At any rate, I still liked the book but I hope the ending is not setting up yet another sequel.
Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
By the time I finished reading this novel I was a fan. One reason for that is the comedy, the other is Oliver. The comedy works really well often enough that I found myself laughing out loud, often during the scenes with Odile and Judy, and Priya and the truck and the friends, and some of the scenes with Luc and Oliver. The comedy had different levels: working really well, working okay, and then there’s the level where the jokes get stretched thin and you have to wait till Hall gets it cranked up again. It’s a bit like The Little Engine That Could. But by the time you go through that cycle a couple of times you understand that the writer is quite reliable and the spark of the book if not steady is at least true. I will forgive a book for a lot if it can make me laugh with that sudden sharp quality that means a comic moment landed just right. There are a lot of those. Luc and Oliver are good characters, and Oliver when he comes along and starts to thaw draws out a side of Luc that I can feel. In reading a book from a genre where there are expected outcomes and conventions, like most romance (and frankly like all the genres if you factor in the different set of conventions each requires), you truly have to admire a writer who can negotiate all that and make you cheer for what happens, even if that feeling is sometimes intermittent. Comedy is the hardest thing. I did start the book and put it down after three chapters because the comic writing felt so forced and thin at the beginning. But I think this is because when we meet Luc he is alone (autocorrect keeps changing Luc to Luckily and Lucy) and his alone moments are never his best. He requires context. When I picked it up again and the fake boyfriend jokes start occurring and recurring, I read steadily. At any rate this book was a confection, a fine box of chocolates.
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
This is one of those books that defies category, being science fiction in conception but handled in such a way that people who don’t read science fiction won’t notice. It’s the premise that makes it work. The title would be a spoiler except that we understand from the very first page that not only do we know the ending, so do the two main characters. The idea that you get a call on the day you die is priceless in terms of the possibilities it creates. The writing is solid. Rufus and Mateo are slow burn characters, unfolding to each other and into us at the same time. It would be a tearjerker of a book if I were not in my late sixties, having lived in the shadow of imminent death most of my life. Even so it was a deeply affecting read. The book is told in short chapters, which is always a good strategy that keeps me reading. The constant shifts from character to character – there are probably two dozen of them – put the book at an occasional disadvantage since it felt as if I were constantly being asked to change seats at a party, or something like that. But the central premise still unites it. All the characters are interwoven in subtle ways which also adds to the unity of the book. And the love story is simply sweet and right. They fall in love and die exactly as we know they will from the beginning, but it still hurts and it still feels joyous. This is a writer who knows how to conceive a story.
The Elephant’s Journey by José Saramago
When you read a Saramago novel you have to adjust to his way of doing things. He punctuates in his own way, he does not capitalize words, at least in this book, and of course he writes dialog in a pattern that I’ve only seen in his books. All this works well enough. This book is most notable for the prose, which is comic, a bit arch, but very natural, and in which the author presents himself as the shaper of the work, and uses this device to explain the past to us while never attempting to recreate it. He has heard this story of an elephant given by the King of Portugal to the Archduke of Austria and it becomes a novel as we watch. It is that aspect of the book that makes it most readable, that it feels as if we are reading the novel as it unfolds in Saramago’s mind. His mind in this book is an amiable and delicious place to be. But because this is the process going on in the foreground of the reading, the story never has much urgency. It is an easy book to put down. It is equally easy to pick up again, but it never feels all that important to do so. But Saramago’s idea of comedy is charming and erudite and fun all at the same time, and I read the book with pleasure if not with excitement.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
This is what you want a reading experience to be, a clear strong voice, a writer who stays out of the way but makes great decisions, characters that emerge, a compelling beginning, a through-line of energy, and an ending that lands exactly right. For me, this was also a bit like a homecoming, since the book is set in Atlanta and refers to so many places that were my home for decades, like Little Five Points, Junkman’s Daughter, Zesto’s. My neighborhood actually. Simon is a wonderful creation, the blackmail he endures on page one hooked me right away, and for the first time in ages I can talk about not being able to put a book down. In this case it wasn’t just the drama, though that was strong. The writing was sure and steady, the first person handled with elegance, and the world executed fully and completely. This was not my era of teenagedom but by the end I felt as if I knew this era better, a generation that I taught in creative writing classes when they were a bit older. I found myself looking up all the music references that I didn’t know. It was a book that made me happy to read even in the painful moments. It is not a hard book or a dark book, and that was fine with me. I know that not everybody has the privilege of family or friends like Simon, I know there are much harder stories out there, but I was delighted to encounter this one, even if I’m years late to the party. This is one of those young adult novels that anybody can read; it deftly touched the young adult that still hides away in me.
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
Reviews of this book and many other of Hollinghurst’s books note the fine writing. The sentences in this book are well done, as usual, and the book has a goodly number of moments like those to be found in his other works: muscular men, the feel of taut bodies beneath clothing, seductions mundane and breathless, artful descriptions of sex, assessments of the attractiveness of all and sundry, and longing longing longing. I have read Hollinghurst with enjoyment and respect and that is about as far as it has gone, even in the celebrated novels. But I have never before found him dull. There is a good book in here somewhere but it is not Hollinghurst’s kind of book; he would have had to be willing to make an actual tragedy of David Sparsholt and his supposed charisma and attractiveness. Sparsholt is caught having a three way that lands in the tabloids and destroys his marriage and perhaps his successful engineering firm. He endures public humiliation that tears his family apart. But all that recedes far into the background. It is not what interested Hollinghurst, and instead we have the observer Freddie Green reporting on a story told to him about Sparsholt’s male-male encounter at Oxford and afterward we have the observer Jonny, David’s son, meandering through his life as an out gay man through several decades of encounters with the same set of people who knew his father, and a few others. One could construct a reading of the novel as being about changing views of gender and particularly of gay maleness but really most of what fills the pages is people hoping to seduce or be seduced by other people. Jonny’s gay marriage takes a back seat. Pat, his husband, is almost invisible. There is little or no exploration of being a couple. Jonny’s early frustration with Ivan, who likes older men, gets more attention. The whole effect is puzzling. But the pages are decorated with bits of art history, visits to gay clubs, a number of bulges in trousers, and the usual lovely writing, which is lovely, undoubtedly. But Virginia Woolf could write a lovely sentence about an ashtray and make you feel sublimely present in it. That does not happen in the present case. One reviewer I read noted that this might have been a fabulous book at 200 pages, but are there any 200-page Hollinghurst books? Nevertheless I did finish it. I will think of that as an accomplishment.
Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert
The subtitle of the book is “An LGBTQIA Rivals-to-Lovers Road Trip Romance,” which serves as a reassurance, a summary, and a pitch. The breadth of the spoilers would be a problem if Annabeth Albert were not a good writer, but she is. I had no idea romance publishing had taken this turn of offering labels to guide readers to exactly what it is they want to read and confess to have been put off by it, but I wanted to read a romance novel and made my way through this one with a good deal of delight. Conrad and Alden are charmingly troubled, cute as pie, delightfully antagonistic to each other in that way that is sure to melt by the end of the book since each, predictably but deliciously, is exactly what the other needs. I never felt entirely immersed in the book, which is written in a workmanlike way, straightforward and clean; but nevertheless I was caught up in the relationship and by the end of the story was affected by the depth of what the two boys were feeling. I call them boys as they did themselves but they are presented in their early twenties and ought to be choosing to call themselves men rather soon, if not already. The fact that they don’t makes them feel younger than they are and helps the book to ride a line between young adult writing and adult romance, which, as it turns out, is a very comfortable territory. They have sufficient complications to give them a touch of layering, though nothing that impedes the forward motion of the story. The sex was a bit detailed but without losing the book its charm, and I expect this is a strategy of the genre, after all. It has been a while since I read romance and I found myself pleasantly surprised, in finding the book, to note how much of this kind of writing there is these days. I would have been happy to encounter stories like Albert’s when I was at this age. The most interesting aspect of the work outside the relationship of the couple was the culture of the book, the world of the fantasy card game in which Alden and Conrad are internet celebrities (though not of an overwhelming fame), and the convention that they attend at which fans of the game gather. This was handled very well, and the road trip itself was managed about as comfortably as I have ever encountered in a book. Writing scene after scene in the interior of a car can be very tedious, but Albert is up to the task.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
During the reading of this book I was constantly reminded of Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven. What I was reminded of was how much better that book was than. Well. The similarities are many. The mad mother. The destiny of the son. The golden hair. The quiet love of the best friend. The war. The landscape of Greece. This is not to say that this current book borrows from the other. What it is to say is that Mary Renault remains incomparable. This book completely lacks any epic quality, and what is left is a thinly conceived MM romance. I love a good romance that has some substance to it. But neither Achilles nor Patroclus has any feeling of authenticity for me. I have read Renault over and over again because of her magic. So I expect I was unlikely to appreciate Miller. Many people do, and I am glad for them, and for her. I wish I had felt the same, because this is a book I should have loved.