Firewatching by Russ Thomas

Reviewer: David C Dawson

What We Thought:

This is a great debut novel in what promises to be a series of mysteries involving a Sheffield-based detective called DS Adam Tyler.

The remains of a wealthy and unpopular businessman are found bricked up in the wall of the Old Vicarage in a quiet Yorkshire town. The man had disappeared six years previously in mysterious circumstances.

DS Adam Tyler is assigned to the case. He’s an ambitious gay detective with a dark secret, and a lot of conflict with the hierarchy in the police force. An attractive young man called Oscar picks him up in a gay bar. Oscar also happens to be the son of the dead businessman.

And then it all gets very complicated…

As well as a murderer to find, there’s an arsonist on the loose. And there are two suspicious aged spinsters who live together and have a connection with Oscar.

Then there’s the gay fire chief Paul Enfield…

Thomas’s debut novel is a conventional detective mystery with a gay hero, or maybe anti-hero at its core. Thomas throws in every possible red herring he can think of, plus an interesting cast of flawed characters, none of whom are entirely trustworthy.

The story is mainly recounted from DS Tyler’s perspective. But Thomas uses multiple points of view to give us some great twists, together with reader prior knowledge, which will keep you on the edge of your seat.

The climax is gripping, and Thomas ties together every loose end in a very satisfying way.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Barbara Vine, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid

Avoid if you don’t like: Some graphic description of cruelty

Ideal accompaniment: A flaming Sambuca

Genre: Crime Fiction, Police procedural, LGBTQ


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Wonderland by Juno Dawson

Reviewer: David C Dawson

What we thought:

Amazingly, this is Dawson’s (no relation!) twentieth young adult novel. I gave her debut novel Hollow Pike a rave review here on Bookmuse four years ago.

Dawson’s come a long way since her debut novel in 2012, both personally and in her writing. Wonderland has a hard edge to it, without losing the humour Dawson managed so well in her previous novels.

Alice Dodgson is a privileged young aspirant trans-woman who’s bored with the dreary academia of her expensive private school. Her friend Bunny has gone missing, and Alice goes to find her. That’s when she discovers the elite Wonderland Party, and meets a host of drug and sex addicted characters, including Dinah and the Tweedle Twins.

As you can probably tell already, the references to Lewis Carol’s classic children’s story are prolific, clever and witty. But Dawson uses the rough framework of Carol’s story to explore a host of complex issues, including sexuality, privilege, mental health, and drug taking. At times it’s a very dark and shocking read.

The issues Dawson tackles are highly relevant to young people today, and she deals with them in an honest, and emotionally mature way, which is so refreshing. At several points in the book my middle-aged, middle-class mind had to pause and ask the question: is this appropriate for a young adult? The answer came swiftly: definitely.

Dawson clearly draws on her experience as a trans-woman, and sections of the book feel almost autobiographical. But before you dismiss it as an angsty teenage read, let me reassure you that the writing is tight, and the plot is complex and intriguing.

Highly recommended.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Holly Jackson, Sophie McKenzie

Avoid if you don’t like: Some explicit sex, drug references, suicide references

Ideal accompaniments: Jam tarts

Genre: Young Adult, LGBTQ

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This Brutal House by Niven Govinden

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set amongst the New York Drag Ball scene, where rival Houses, led by House Mothers, compete to outdo each other in costume, attitude and above all voguing.

The book opens with a group of the House Mothers staging a silent protest on the steps of City Hall to highlight the lack of response by the authorities to the disappearance of a number of their ‘children’. This section is written in an unusual first-person-plural collective stream of consciousness:

“They have used ‘no’ and ‘unfortunately’ and ‘unable’ as pacifiers, shushing us the way a nanny calms an agitated baby. We are unwanted noise, not to be seen or heard.”

Collective silence has become the most powerful voice they have.

The narrative then passes on to the novel’s main protagonist, Teddy. Teddy was once one of the House Mothers’ children, one of many who fled rejection from their own families and found a home amongst the drag queens. But though he competed for them for a time in the Drag Ball scene, he was never really comfortable as a performer. Instead, he became the devoted follower of one of them, Sherry, while the Mothers supported him in getting the education that would allow him to break free.

Sherry is now one of the missing, and though Teddy believes he knows what happened to her, he will not tell the Mothers because he cannot bring himself to crush their hope.

The education they helped him get has led him to work for City Hall and because of his known connection with the Mothers, he is charged with monitoring the protest and bringing it to a close. He does everything he can so smooth things over – but will a fatal misjudgement destroy everything he has sought to protect?

The voice of the Caller periodically breaks through the narrative, holding forth for pages at a time:

“She walks. She works. She vogues. Triple threat, bitches...”

This Brutal House shows the sadness behind the glamour and flamboyance of the Drag Ball Scene – young people rejected by their biological families and discounted by the authorities; older ‘Mothers,’ nurturing, yet ageing inevitably in a world that values youth and glamour...

Dark, disturbing and hypnotic.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Beasts of Electra Drive by Rohan Quine, Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead, POSE (FX TV series)

Avoid If You Dislike: Passages in stream-of-consciousness style

Perfect Accompaniment: Tacos

Genre: Literary Fiction, LGBTQIA+ Fiction

Buy This Book Here

Giovannni's Room by James Baldwin

Reviewer: David C Dawson

What We Thought:

When you read a gay romance written over sixty years ago you expect it to be dated. It’s too easy to smugly believe that attitudes have changed, that there’s a greater openness towards gay people and that shame in the gay community has gone.

The beauty of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is that it brings into sharp focus what it is still like for millions of gay men around the world. Men who live in countries where religious or societal oppression forces them to hide and be ashamed of themselves. It also reminds us how the struggle for gay rights is still very recent history.

David is a young American living in Paris. His girlfriend is travelling in Spain. David meets Giovanni, an Italian barman who works in a bar frequented by gay men. They fall in love and David moves in with Giovanni in his single room apartment. This is the era before instant communication. Throughout much of the book David’s girlfriend is out of sight and mostly out of mind.

Baldwin uses metaphor brilliantly. As the relationship sours, the single room in which David lives with Giovanni becomes claustrophobic, as it reflects the suffocating claustrophobia he feels in his ambivalent emotions towards Giovanni.

Despite his love for Giovanni, David’s self-loathing at being a gay man is never far below the surface. He despises effeminate men in the bar, comparing them to “watching monkeys eating their own excrement.”

Only much later in the novel does David reveal his self-knowledge. “I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.”

The book gives enormous insight into the mind of James Baldwin. He was a black, gay American living through the enormous repression of the1950s. His characters frequently comment on the telescope through which Americans observe Europe. One of his characters observes wryly, “Americans should never come to Europe. It means they can never be happy again.” His French characters refers to damaged American innocence and the myth of American happiness.

The structure of Giovanni’s Room is simple but engrossingly effective. From the start you know that Giovanni will die by the guillotine. Only much later do you find out why. You know that David has a girlfriend who he intends to marry. Only later do you find out what will happen to this doomed relationship.

Books are too often referred to as modern classics, but this is no overstatement in the case of Giovanni’s Room. It’s a novel that questions the nature of love itself. Baldwin’s prose is masterly and I urge you to read this wonderful book.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White

Avoid if you don’t like: Unhappy endings

Ideal accompaniments: A Ricard

Genre: Romance LGBTQ

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Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Review by: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

I wish he knew that when an NDN laughs, it’s because they are applying a fresh layer of medicine on an open wound.

Jonny Appleseed is an urban NDN - young, Two Spirit / Indigiqueer and a glitter princess. He has left the rez in northern Manitoba and made a life for himself in Winnepeg, earning his living creating sexual fantasies on camera for other gay men.

I’m like an Etch-a-Sketch – every cell in my body is yours to define.

Homophobia was rampant on the rez, especially among the men. And Winnepeg is known as ‘the most racist city in Canada.’ Jonny has spent his life playing straight on the rez in order to be an NDN and playing white in the city in order to be queer. There are perhaps only three people in the world who accept him as himself – his mother, his Kokum (grandmother) and his childhood friend and sometime lover, Thias.

Funny how an NDN “love you” sounds more like “I’m in pain with you.”

But Kokum is dead and Thias is in love with a girl called Jordan. Then his mother calls to say that his stepdad, Roger – ‘a pig-headed, alcoholic, homophobic sonuva’ – has died, and she wants him home for the funeral. So now he has a couple of days to earn enough money for his rent AND to pay for the journey home.

As the story flips between Jonny’s memories of growing up on the Rez and his present life in Winnepeg, Whitehead plays with language as if he’s inventing it afresh. He references January Jones, The Revenant or Elle from Stranger Things as lightly as he references the elements of Oji-Cree beliefs and traditions salvaged from the wreckage of the past.

This is two generations on from the residential school system that ripped through indigenous communities throughout Canada, but the wounds are still open. Jonny ‘s life is a desperate, clinging-to-the-edge existence. And yet there is a joy and a tenderness and a depth of love that emerges from the hurt and sorrow.

A powerful, utterly modern story that will take you by the scruff of the neck and shake your preconceptions. Long-listed for the 2018 Giller Prize.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Break by Katherena Vermette, Birdie by Tracey Lindberg, When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola

Avoid If You Dislike: Unflinching descriptions of gay sex

Perfect Accompaniment: Soup and bannock (or something with hamburger helper!)

Genre: Literary Fiction, LGBTQ Fiction, Indigenous Fiction

Available on Amazon

This Small Cloud: a Personal Memoir by Harry Daley

Reviewer: David Dawson

What We Thought:

It’s unusual to review a book that’s out of print, but I highly recommend this fascinating dive into England’s social history, and a time when being gay was punishable by imprisonment. This Small Cloud was published posthumously in 1987. There are second hand editions available, and I’m willing to lend my copy. It’s an important book.

Harry Daley was born in Norfolk in 1901. He knew from an early age that he was gay. During his life he was a merchant seaman, a London policeman, a member of the Bloomsbury Set, and E. M. Forster’s lover.

He encountered many famous people, including Prime Minister Bonar Law, the women’s rights campaigner Marie Stopes, and media magnate Lord Beaverbrook.

Daley’s writing is candid and direct. In life he was honest and open, and never hid the fact that he was gay. He writes about the prejudice he faced, both in youth and later in the Metropolitan Police in London. He never denied his sexuality, but importantly, he never allowed senior officers in the police force to get the better of him, or hold back opportunities from him.

He was bullied by some of his colleagues, and describes in the book how the bullies “were ex-Guardsmen who looked on homosexuals as a source of extra income. They couldn’t resist telling of their adventures with rich old queers but anxious not to give themselves away completely always ended with ‘Of course – directly he touched me – biff bang wallop.’ Of course!”

In the mid-twenties he became a part of the Bloomsbury Set and began a relationship with E. M. Forster. The writer was not the only person to fall for Daley, and Daley is clear that his preferences were for what he called “normal men” who were older, rougher and stronger than himself.

This was a surprising book in many ways. Daley gives fascinating descriptions of a side of early twentieth century Britain I had not read about before. His writing style is accessible, and he tells a good story. This is first-hand social history, and it’s first-rate.

You’ll enjoy this if you loved: Fighting Proud by Stephen Bourne

Avoid if you dislike: Some limited descriptions of gay sex

Ideal accompaniments: A spam sandwich and a pint of stout

Genre: Autobiography LGBTQ

https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Small-Cloud-Harry-Daley/dp/0297793586

The Deadly Lies by David C Dawson

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

David Dawson’s sequel to his debut crime novel, The Necessary Deaths, makes for another entertaining read.

Dominic Delingpole is on honeymoon with his beloved Jonathan, but neither in life nor in love are things allowed to go entirely smoothly. When a former lover sends a cryptic message to Dominic minutes before a fatal car crash, it puts both their lives and their barely-formed marriage in peril.

With the help of maverick student programmer, Steve, can they solve the riddle before anyone else is killed? And can Dominic and Jonathan's marriage survive its first big hurdle?

The theme of lies runs through the novel. The main plot concerns a chip that could allow the mysterious Charter 99 to rewrite online history – with little regard to the lives they would turn upside down. At the same time, as Dominic and Jonathan navigate the new territory of marriage, the impact of lies – even innocent lies - on relationships is thrown into relief.

The action moves between two long-established gay communities - Sitges in Spain and San Francisco in California. If Dawson’s first novel showed us his relatively conventional hero at home and at work, here he is on holiday, and like Dominic himself, the text has become a little more unbuttoned. There is more explicit (though still not graphic) sex than in the first book.

Last time I compared Dawson’s writing to Margery Allingham. This time, there is an echo or two of Dorothy Sayers’ Busman’s Honeymoon. But Dawson writes with a lighter touch than Sayers. There are no great intellectual challenges here. It remains, however, an affectionate portrait of the manners and mores of gay relationships, as well as fast-paced study in cyber-crime.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Necessary Deaths by David C Dawson, Babycakes by Armistead Maupin, Cold Pressed by JJ Marsh.

Avoid If You Dislike: Light-weight crime fiction. Explicit references to gay sex.

Perfect Accompaniment: Albondigas en salsa and a glass of Cava

Genre: Crime, LGBTQ fiction

Available on Amazon

When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

Two friends so close they are like twins. One who never stops talking. The other who never stops running. In the summer before their eighteenth birthdays, their lives pull them in different directions. Karl flies to Nigeria in search of a father he never knew existed. Abu stays behind, in a London about to explode into riots.

Port Harcourt gives Karl a chance to be himself, free of other people’s assumptions. In company of new friends, he learns how oil companies are despoiling the landscape while leaving local people in poverty.

“The village we are passing. Life expectancy is only 35 years. Because of the flaring. The gas, it comes back with the rain. There’s toxicity. Health problems.”

Back in London, Abu is immersed in a school project, discovering the memoirs of Mary Prince, an enslaved black woman who lived and worked in the Bloomsbury streets he walks down every day. And then there’s the anger that’s brewing on the streets. The anger that will explode into the 2011 riots.

Karl and Abu have always shared everything. But distance, new friendships and first love are all carving a space between them. Will their relationship be broken by their experiences – or just fundamentally changed?

This is a coming-of-age tale that explores friendship and trust, sexuality and gender. It touches, too, on the long legacy of slavery and colonialism to be found in both London and Nigeria. The voice is unusual, almost as if you’re overhearing a story one friend is telling another, and they’re not going to wait for you to catch up or fill in the gaps.

The sort of story that opens a window in your mind and lets in a breath of fresh air.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta, Orange Boy by Patrice Lawrence, Feral Youth by Polly Courtney

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories of teenagers exploring gender and sexuality

Perfect Accompaniment: Spicy Nigerian beef and tomato stew

Genre: Young Adult, LGBTQ

Available on Amazon

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

Like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chinelo Okparanta is an Igbo from the southern part of Nigeria, and like Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Under the Udala Trees takes us inside the Biafran War. This, however, is no a war story, but a love story and a plea for compassion and tolerance.

Ijeoma is a child when her father is killed by a bomb blast and her mother sinks into depression.

She shed us all like a bad habit. Or maybe, simply, the way one casts off a set of dirty, thorn-infested clothes.

Ijeoma is sent away to live with a teacher and his wife, to work as their house girl. There she meets Amina, a Hausa refugee, a Muslim girl, one of the ‘enemy.’ Ijeoma persuades the teacher to shelter Amina and, living together in a tiny hut in the grounds of the teacher’s house, the two fall in love.

But in a deeply religious country, their relationship is considered an ‘abomination’ and when they are discovered, Ijeoma is packed off back to her mother. The war is now over and her mother has become a small shopkeeper. Ijeoma is subjected to endless Bible reading sessions and exhortations to pray, each a twisted lesson designed to prove that same-sex relationships are a sin beyond any other, even rape and violence.

What in another setting could be a simple LGBT coming of age story takes on a different complexion here. We are left in no doubt what openly pursuing such a relationship could lead to when a friend is hacked to death for attending a clandestine lesbian nightclub held, ironically enough, in a church.

Ijeoma tries to comply with what society expects of her. She agrees to marry her childhood sweetheart. But the effect on her is devastating. She withdraws further and further from the world, until she is no longer capable even of caring for her own child. Her alienation, the drying up of her soul, echoes Okparanta’s description of wartime destruction of the countryside.

Before the war ... the hibiscus flowers painted the bushes red and it was barely a remarkable thing, that deep redness of theirs. But now almost all the plants had withered and the wind carried in it only traces of destruction.

The poetry and freshness of Okparanta’s language brings to life equally moments of ecstasy and depression, horror and beauty.

Under the Udala Trees is set fifty years ago, yet little has changed for lesbian and gay Nigerians. As Okparanta points out in her afterword, in January 2014, Nigeria’s then President, Goodluck Jonathan, signed a bill criminalising same-sex relationships. Violators face up to 14 years of prison and in the northern region, risk death by stoning.

Yet the story is not one of despair. Love is not extinguished and the book ends on a flicker of hope.

You’ll Enjoy it if You Loved: Oranges are not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Avoid if you dislike: Untranslated words and phrases in a foreign language

Perfect Accompaniment: Roasted yams with pepper sauce.

Genre: LGBTQ, Literary Fiction, African Fiction

Available on Amazon

Celia’s Room by Kevin Booth

Reviewer: Barbara Scott Emmett, author of The Land Beyond Goodbye, Don’t Look Down and Delirium: The Rimbaud Delusion. (http://barbarascottemmett.blogspot.co.uk/)

What We Thought: Every now and again a reader comes across a book which is a perfect fit. For me, this is one of those books. I had very little idea of what Celia’s Room was about before I started reading it, so it was a true pleasure to enter this world and discover it was one I was comfortable in.

Alternating chapters tell the first person stories of two young men: Joaquim and Eduardo. Barcelona is almost a third protagonist in this beautifully written novel as we wind through its streets, its bars, and its subcultures uncovering its secrets and its secret places.

Joaquim, an artist, and Eduardo, a business student, are polar opposites involved with a group of friquis that includes the flamboyant Caribbean Narcissus, Alvaro his lover, a host of minor characters, and of course Celia, a prostitute of dubious gender. Narcissus inveigles Joaquim into stumping up the rent on a decaying mansion and the freaks move in. There are grand plans to restore the house to its former glory but little is likely to come of it. The seedy grandeur of the former ballroom, with its peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster, provides the perfect backdrop for this strange collection of people and their drug-infused dreams.

Both Joaquim and Eduardo fall under the spell of Celia who is mysterious, voluptuous and aloof. Eduardo is both attracted and repelled; this is not the life he wants for himself and he merely skirts the fringes of group. His brutish behaviour hides his pain at the loss of his father and sister; his entanglement with Celia almost destroys his relationship with his girlfriend Fra.

Joaquim is disturbed by his own sexual confusion. He is drawn to both Celia and Narcissus though an undercurrent of distrust unbalances him. He paints portraits of each them, not knowing if his work is good or bad, or if it will be received positively, or even if he will ever reveal it at all.

This richly allusive novel has its own mysterious voluptuousness – the prose is studded with gems and brilliant flashes. There is often a dreamlike underwater feel to the narrative yet it is always fully alive. Behind the beauty we sense the dread, the fear of what may come, the fragile hold on love and friendship that may turn out not to be that at all.

With Celia’s Room Kevin Booth has created a minor masterpiece.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Almodóvar films.

Avoid if you dislike: Gender-bending; prose and characterisation over plot.

Ideal accompaniments: As much drink and drugs as you can handle.

Genre: Literary Fiction, LGBTQ.

Available from Amazon