Crewe's debut novel begins in the summer of 1894 as John Addington makes the important decision that he won't deny his sexual and romantic longing for men any longer. He's middle aged and married to a woman named Catherine. They have multiple children who are now adults themselves. The few sexual encounters John's previously experienced resulted in repentance and a return to the sublimation of his desires. After he meets a man named Frank at a nude swimming pond in London he longs for the kind of domestic closeness any couple in love wants. Most modern readers will naturally recognise that John has repressed his homosexuality because of Victorian attitudes which not only condemned gay relationships but criminalised them. The consequences of such laws were made famous by Oscar Wilde's 1895 trial which casts a shadow over this story.
Obviously John's life has been painful and we want to see him find happiness. What's so engaging and innovative about this novel is the way it shows the full complexity of trying to obtain such happiness. How do you change laws which criminalise such desire without first dispelling widespread prejudice? How do you change the attitudes of the public without first changing the laws? How do you reconcile your own innate desires within the framework of a society which teaches you to repress them? How much are you willing to obstruct the happiness of others' to achieve your own? Many scenes in this novel are more concerned with the way such questions intrude upon moments of these characters' lives leaving them in a tense state of ambiguity and uncertainty. In doing so, it causes readers to ponder their own assumptions about what is just and what is right.
Running parallel to John's story is that of a shy young man named Henry who enters into a non-traditional marriage with Edith. The couple share a strong intellectual connection and commitment to working towards “the New Life” as Henry feels “we must live in the future we hope to make”. Henry and Edith maintain separate residences as Edith is engaged in a romantic relationship with another woman named Angelica. Henry also has secret sexual proclivities which he finds excruciatingly painful to admit. He exchanges letters with John as they write a book together titled “Sexual Inversion” which seeks to establish an intellectual and medical basis for homosexuality. They hope this will lead to changes in the larger society and help usher everyone into this ideal conception of a “New Life.” However, historical circumstances and the impact this publication has upon people connected to the book dramatically complicate these aims.
These matters create such an intriguing and unexpected plot which plays out over the course of nearly two years in these characters' lives. Crewe's academic speciality for this period of British history gracefully informs the story and imbues it with tantalizing atmospheric detail. It also allows the author to adeptly deviate from historical fact and the actual men who inspired these characters in a way which serves the fiction extremely well. There is a striking scene where London is covered in such a thick fog that boys with lanterns need to be hired to guide people from one spot to another. This fog provides a natural metaphor for the dilemmas of the story as well as a romantic opportunity for desires which ordinarily must be concealed to be expressed in the open. The writing is highly sensuous (as one would hope it would be given the subject matter) and unashamedly captures the object of these characters' desires as well as how their yearnings manifest. It makes it a very sexy novel (albeit in a very English way) falling naturally in line with the work of Alan Hollinghurst.
I found it particularly moving how John has such a strong sense of being watched even in private moments and how this has inhibited him for most of his life. Yet, when he becomes adamant about being open about his desires it impedes upon the lives of others such as his wife Catherine who speaks up at a crucial moment in the story. As total disclosures are made it also turns some who are sympathetic and supportive of John against him. This creates more haunting questions for the reader concerning what liberty we actually possess to confess all that we are to the world. How much honesty can our relationships and larger society take? Equally, the characters' earnest desire to establish a “New Life” compellingly teases out the vaguely shifting lines between being and becoming. There are no easy answers to these problems and by casting us back to a period of history that we believe we've progressed far away from, Crewe cleverly makes clear how the past is actually still present.
