My Achilles by Stanley Iyanu

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With its framing of Greek Myths held lightly (or maybe I just don’t know them well enough to get the references?) the is a tender collection of poems rich in love.

weird + wonderful

you are not the boy you once were

gone are the thin legs, high ankle socks

and church clothes that no longer fit

braces have removed your gaps

so you no longer hide your smile

you are not the boy you once were

gone is the shyness, that small waist

the need for a father’s love -

but thankfully so is the fear

in being who you really are

you are not the boy you once were

your innocence is a thing of the past

but your heart remains the same

that boy so gentle and tender

is a man now, weird + wonderful

The Fights that make Us by Sarah Hagger-Holt

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I probably sound like a broken record in praise of Sarah’s writing – this is another book that captured my heart.

I read it on the way to and from Pilgrim Cross – where Northern Leg is relaxed in its inclusion of Trans, Non-Binary, and LGB + pilgrims, it is a delight to be in a space where you are included by default – we have travelled far since the moment when I nervously came out to my Northern Leg friends in the Jesus Arms at Greenbelt the best part of twenty years ago. But enough about me…

This book is about two stories, Jesse’s story today and Lisa story of 1988, it is a bit of a history lesson but a necessary one – so much queer history is forgotten we need people to tell our stories – to remind the increasingly toxic society we live in that we have always been here.

My relationship with Section 28 is complex – I was seven when it came into force and 22 when it was repealed – my engagement in the campaign to get rid of it in Scotland was one of the first expressions of me coming out to myself – but it is only in recent years that I have understood the shadow it cast over my sense of self - “pretended families” is a phrase that has settled deep in a well of shame that I carry with me everywhere.

Sarah writes books of hope but this one feels more 50/50 – we have no explicit happy ever after for Lisa, for Jesse there is a ‘Stand up, Stand out’ affirmation, we wish them well as we send them off into the storm clouds...

Kidnap Fury of the Smoking Lovers by Peter Benson

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Peter Benson combines a strong narrative with a poetic sensibility in a way that is rare.

There will be spoiler in what follows …

While the central narrative has power it is surrounded by unresolved plot lines … in partiular the sub-plot of the private detective Derek Muir – briefly engaged by Harry Swaine to track down Fargo and Anne but then ending up in his own messy scene of domestic violence, which happens mid-way through the book but has no impact on anything else that happens. It feels like it is a stand alone short story that has got accidentally included.

In the same way Harry and Anne’s sons clearly have significant backstories but these are never unpacked so they sort of hang there serving no purpose.

The love story of Anne and Fargo is charming, and you will them on, you want this sort of fairy tale love to work, and Peter Benson gives us that story.

Harry Swaine is the villain of the piece, and yet there are moments when, for all his wrongs, you feel sorry for him – there is no excuse for being a bully but there are reason why people turn out like that.

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

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To write the sequel to your debut novel after a wait of 20 years is an interesting move (there has been plenty of other work published in between) – that long pause contrasts with the 14 months between my reading of this pair.

Rilke’s world is no less seedy, there is an edge to his existence which is attractive – he remains an outside in a society that increasingly invites cis-gender gay white men to become part of what counts as “conformity” - we are given the choice of being part of “normal” or remaining with our queerer siblings.

That Louise Welsh writes Rilke with such authenticity is a real skill – he is rough around the edges in a way that makes him a fully rounded character – you feel you have probably meet him somewhere – there are not cardboard cut outs in the core cast.

One insight I particularly enjoyed was this:

“… he had offered me a whisky. Some other night I might have accepted, but it was late, and a whisky with a lonely man is never one whisky.” (p171)

A piece of wisdom I have sometimes missed – there was a time I fell for the “come on now, one for the road” line into double figures.

I will now read some of her other works – these two books about Rilke are so well crafted I wonder if Rilke is a particular muse or if the rest at equally pitch prefect…

The Retreat by Alison Moore

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This is a deeply unsettling work, alternating between Sandra and Carol’s time on the islands Lieloh and Little Lieloh, separated in time but overlapping in geography.

Sandra has dreamed since childhood about Lieloh and joins an artist retreat there only to find the others fairly causal in their investment in it. What unfolds feels like the all too familiar experience of neurodivergent people in a neurotypical world.

I am not sure if that is Alison Moore’s intent but I connected with it as one of the most authentic description of neurodivergent experience – I felt very seen and the way in which the others view Sandra as aloof is a trap I think I have fallen into more than once.

But there is also a layer of the supernatural going on – things happen in the house in which Carol is alone that can not be explained, similar things happen in the house in which Sandra and the others are staying, and they are explained as acts of passive/not so passive aggression by one side or the other – that there might be a third party in the mix in never considered.

In my reading of it, it is a bleak diagnosis, Sandra stepped out of her life to follow a dream and which only seemed to take her on a downward spiral – that is not what we want to hear – it almost says “stay in your dreary little life it is better than the alternative!”

The back of the book refers to “Moore’s trademark compelling unease”, which is well said, a book that made me uncomfortable and yet I couldn’t put it down.

Boy Friends by Michael Pedersen

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This account of Michael Pedersen’s friendship with, and grief for, Scott Hutchinson searches for the vocabulary to speak about male friendship – it is a cliché that men struggle to talk about the emotional bond between them because it is true – and so this is a particular gift. Bringing wit and humour in alongside the raw and painful.

Michael begins by remembering childhood friends that have past in and out of his life as circumstances changed, that some friendships are fleeting does not stop them being intense and having a profound impact on the people we grow up to be.

There is a sense of foreboding as Michael moves on to the account of his and Scott’s friendship, with in the delight of it we know there is a shadow to come.

Rather than try re-articulate the power of the account of grief I will share these quotes...

By the time you were found, hundreds (into thousands) of people were looking for you; I imagine every one of them will have asked things of themselves they would never repeat. I am no different.

I emerge from the crash bleeding, but still loving, still breathing. It’s now a case of survival. That’s what comes next. Living while you don’t is its own arcane act of endurance. I will remind myself every day, there is no shame in having to try this hard to stay afloat. To keep going is a gift. (p139)

Often it feels such extreme emotion should be worn as a sash or garish lanyard, visually obvious in a manner that commands attention… Other times… the idea that people might bear witness to my grief is humiliating and abhorrent. (p1)

People’s expectations of our grief can becomes an acute source of anxiety – when is too soon for a public engagement; can I share my good news; just how candidly can pain be written down then read aloud; should I cancel my birthday party; does this elegy distort someone else’s version of the truth; what about a wedding; just how seriously are you taking this; when is it okay to start laughing again; can I post this sexy-looking selfie? (p192)

Hollywood sweetheart Keanu Reeves said: ‘grief changes shape but never ends’. (p213)

All of Us Strangers written and directed by Andrew Haigh, and based on the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada

 

Spoilers, Spoilers, and more Spoilers ...

Having not been to the Cinema for years we have been twice in as many weeks, first to see The Lost Boys (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16148552/) which shows the possibility of tenderness in tough places, and then All of Us Strangers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_of_Us_Strangers).

The first thing I want to say is hands up if you know of another film adaptation that changed a books straight characters into gay/queer characters rather than making the queer straight – signs of the times, perhaps.

The “central conceit” is allowing 47 year old Adam to have conversations with the parents of 12 year old Adam on equal terms. I am not sure if it is a nod to Yamada that Adam’s time travel is to 1987 the year Strangers was published or if it just takes us to a particularly toxic moment in queer history.

In the conversation between Adam and his Mother in which he comes out, her reaction, in the context of 1987, is entirely understandable as she lives in a society that makes the lives of queer people hard and therefore she is naturally worried that her son is going to be subjected to that hardship. Adam tells her that these fears are unfounded and yet he is not happy – the poor mental health of middle-aged queer people in 2024 has a lot to do with the toxicity of the 1980s – all the progress in LGB rights, and the progress in terms of prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, does not completely remove the baggage from our youth. (while T+ rights are tragically in reverse).

Alongside Adam and his parents you have the dynamic of Adam and Harry, that gay men find each other by waving out the window rather than staring at the grid on Grindr is perhaps more far fetched than time-travelling to chat with your death parents! Those of us of Adam’s generation long to see the rising generation of queer people living the uncomplicated lives we never imagined could be ours. And yet it turns out Harry’s loneliness is fatal while Adam’s was just miserable.

It is an intense film, but I was also frustrated by it – I am can’t comment on Yamada’s original, but in this adaptation the narrative around Adam and his parents felt like a short story that could have been trimmed by a couple of pages. Meanwhile given where it ends I am not sure what Harry’s narrative actually gave us, in the final moments of the film I was left with Dallas vibes, darker than Bobby Ewing walking out the shower but just the same you find yourself writing off all that had gone before.

Harry’s loneliness in the midst of the city had been a point of connection for Adam – but it turns out it was a connection that slipped between Adam’s fingers – whether he imagined it, or actually encountered Harry’s ghost, or any other interpretation that it is open to.

If was a film that was very good at messing with my emotions, and maybe that is what films are for, and I am not asking for a “Hollywood” happy ending, but I guess I left the cinema punch drunk and not really know what to do with any of it...